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Attention should be paid to the consistence of the loam; as the more stiff it is, the greater portion of the other is necessary. ALISMA Plantago. I cannot pass over this beautiful aquatic without giving it a place amongst the ornamental plants with which our country abounds.
The "Alisma" was a test of observation and draughtsmanship. He had never seen it so thoroughly or so well drawn, and heartily wished the study were his.
In the Alisma leaf, q r, the lines through its body, which are of peculiar beauty, mark the different expansions of its fibres, and are, I think, exactly the same as those which would be traced by the currents of a river entering a lake of the shape of the leaf, at the end where the stalk is, and passing out at its point.
The Hydrocharis, or Frog's-Bit, and the Alisma, or Water-Plantain, are also easily obtained, hardy and useful, as well as pleasing. Many rarer and more showy varieties may be cultivated; we have given only the most common and essential. All the varieties of Chara are interesting to the microscopist, as showing the phenomenon of the circulation of the sap, or Cyclosis.
I have taken this tree because it is commonly supposed to be stiff and ungraceful; its outer sprays are, however, more noble in their sweep than almost any that I know: but this fragment is seen at great disadvantage, because placed upside down, in order that the reader may compare its curvatures with c d, e g, and i k, which are all mountain lines; e g, about five hundred feet of the southern edge of the Matterhorn; i k, the entire slope of the Aiguille Bouchard, from its summit into the valley of Chamouni, a line some three miles long; l m is the line of the side of a willow leaf traced by laying the leaf on the paper; n o, one of the innumerable groups of curves at the lip of a paper Nautilus; p, a spiral, traced on the paper round a Serpula; q r, the leaf of the Alisma Plantago with its interior ribs, real size; s t, the side of a bay-leaf; u w, of a salvia leaf; and it is to be carefully noted that these last curves, being never intended by nature to be seen singly, are more heavy and less agreeable than any of the others which would be seen as independent lines.
It is of interest to compare this with Ruskin's idea in his Seven Lamps, where he takes the case of a plant called Alisma Plantago, in which the various branches diminish in the proportion of 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, respectively, and so carry out the same idea; on which Ruskin observes that diminution in a building should be after the manner of Nature.
Soon afterwards Fritz Muller discovered that the young stems of an Alisma and of a Linum plants which do not climb and are widely separated in the natural system revolved plainly, though irregularly, and he states that he has reason to suspect that this occurs with some other plants.
Near the water's edge, mingling with sedges, flags, marsh-mallows, bur-reed, and alisma, were the golden flowers of the shrubby lysimachia in dense multitudes, while from the canal itself rose many a spike of water-stachys, with here and there blossoming butomus, near the fringe of the banks.
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