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No matter: his aphorism, the mere whimsical sally of an epicure, becomes an imperious truth if we forget the luxury of the table and look into what is eaten by the little world which swarms around us. To each its mess. The cabbage Pieris consumes the pungent leaves of the Cruciferae as the food of her infancy; the Silkworm disdains any foliage other than that of the mulberry-tree.

Hence I arrive at this conclusion: the White Butterfly, who is fitful in her flight, chooses cabbage first, to dab her eggs upon, and different Cruciferae next, varying greatly in appearance. How does the Pieris manage to know her way about her botanical domain?

Unless the Pieris has an innate power of discrimination to guide her, it is impossible to understand the great extent of her vegetable realm. She needs for her family Cruciferae, nothing but Cruciferae; and she knows this group of plants to perfection. I have been an enthusiastic botanist for half a century and more.

This plant was apparently one of the Cruciferae, more or less seasoned with sulpheretted essence, like the cabbages. Let us experiment on these lines. Penned in a large wire-gauze bell-cage, they accept this provender without demur; they nibble it with the same appetite as if it were cabbage; and they end by producing chrysalids and Butterflies. The change of fare causes not the least trouble.

As these experiments are made in the enclosure of a bell-cage, one might imagine that captivity impels the flock to feed, in the absence of better things, on what it would refuse were it free to hunt for itself. Having naught else within their reach, the starvelings consume any and all Cruciferae, without distinction of species.

Cruciferae were absent, and, what was still more remarkable, I found very few native species of grasses. Both Poa annua and white Dutch clover flourished where accidentally disseminated, but only in artificially cleared spots. Of ferns I collected about sixty species, chiefly of temperate genera.

Here we find a good deal of open ground, with thickets of shrubby Artemisias and Gnaphaliums, like our southernwood and cudweed, but six or eight feet high; while Buttercups, Violets, Whortleberries, Sow-thistles, Chickweed, white and yellow Cruciferae Plantain, and annual grasses everywhere abound. Where there are bushes and shrubs, the St.

This peculiar vegetable production, which was first noticed by Captain Cook a century ago and is indigenous to the island, is termed by botanists the Pringlea antiscorbutica, and belongs to the order of plants classed as the Cruciferae, which embraces the common cabbage of every household garden, the radish, and the horse-radish to the latter of which the Kerguelen cabbage is the most closely allied, on account of its hot pungent taste when eaten raw as well as from its habit and mode of growth.

Cryptogamous acrogens: Acrogens: Mosses, equisetums, ferns, lycopodiums Lepidodendra. Dicotyledonous gymnosperms: Gymnogens: Conifers and Cycads. Dicotyledonous Angiosperms: Exogens: Compositae, leguminosae, umbelliferae, cruciferae, heaths, etc. All native European trees except conifers. Monocotyledons: Endogens.

Of European genera, not found in North America, the Lachen valley has Coriaria, Hypecoum, and various Cruciferae. The Japanese and Chinese floras are represented in Sikkim by Camellia, Deutzia, Stachyurus, Aucuba, Helwingia, Stauntonia, Hydrangea, Skimmia, Eurya, Anthogonium, and Enkianthus.