NEILGHERRY PLANTS.
the calyx usually, by abortion, one-seeded: seed oval.
Pycarah in pastures, frequent. A very diffuse plant lying flat on the ground and spreading all round, extending from 12 to 18 inches from the root, leaves about an inch long and 8 lines broad, under the sur- face sprinkled with minute garnet coloured glandular points, flowers dark dull purple.
XXVII. ROSACEA-ROSE TRIBE.
This in comparison with the preceding is a small family but contributes fully as much, or perhaps more, to the luxuries of life, though less to the wants of mankind than its more bulky neighbour. To this we are indebted for a large proportion of the finest European fruits such as apples, pears, quinces, medlars, cherries, plums, peaches, nectarines, apricots, straw- berries, raspberries, and blackberries, and many more of inferior note. Here also we find as ornaments the charming rose, the fragrant May, the elegant Service and Mountain Ash trees while our flower borders are ornamented with the varied Potentillas, Dryases, Meadow- sweets &c. In this again we have one of the most curious anomalies to be met with in the vegetable kingdom an extensive family in which there is not a poisonous fruit, yet yielding to the Chemist the most intensely active and deleterious agent to animal life yet known in nature, namely, the Prussic acid so abundantly produced by the leaves of the cherry-laurel, peach, almond, &c. trees.
The fact just mentioned, of its producing no poisonous fruit, is interesting, especially to travellers, since any one may with perfect confidence eat the fruit of any Rosaceous plant he bappens to encounter though he has never seen it before.
In their geographical distribution are Rosaceae peculiarly extra-tropical a very few only being found within the tropics and these at considerable elevations. Of the small number, about 15 species recorded as natives of the Indian Peninsula 11 perhaps 12 are found on these Hills, while there is not one to be met with on the plains except the Loquat, an introduced tree which rarely if ever bears fruit near the level of the sea, but does so abundantly at Bangalore, 3,500 feet above it.
In its Botanical relations this family is to the full as intricate as Leguminose but like it, all its various forms are linked together by one constant character, the posterior position of the odd sepal of the calyx. It is always next to the axis, however different or unlike the plants may be in all other respects.
To facilitate the discrimination of its species, which are often very dissimilar, they like Leguminosee have been grooped into suborders, in which the genera that most nearly as- sociate are brought together. These groops or suborders are-1st. Dryadee including the potentillas, strawberries, raspberries, &c. 2d, Roseæ including the true roses. 3d, Pomece in- cluding apples, pears, medlars, hawthorn, &c. 4th, Amygdaleæ including plums, peaches, cherries, &c.; and 5th, Sanguisorbeæ a suborder that might with advantage be removed to another division of the system as a distinct order.
This enumeration of the parts of which the whole is composed will show how complex that whole must be and the deep knowledge of vegetable structure, in connection with vege-
