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Toward their summits they bear much divided leaves, with linear segments and umbels of small whitish flowers, followed by pairs of united, hemispherical, brownish-yellow, deeply furrowed "seeds," about the size of a sweet pea seed. These retain their vitality for five or six years.

First, of all the organs occurring in varying numbers, as for instance the ray-florets of composites, the rays of umbels, the blades of pinnate and palmate leaves, the numbers of veins, etc., are easily shown to comply with the same general rule.

According to American writings, it has been grown in this country for more than 100 years and has become spontaneous in many places. Description. Ordinarily the plants grow 2 to 2-1/2 feet tall. The glaucous, smooth, hollow, branching stems bear very threadlike leaves and in midsummer compound umbels with numerous yellow flowers, whose small petals are rolled inward.

The flowers are ivory-white, and produced in large umbels towards the end of autumn, but our early frosts too often mar their beauty. In this country it grows about 10 feet high, and is usually what is termed "leggy" in appearance, and thrives well in any good loamy soil if fairly dry. FENDLERA RUPICOLA. Mexico, 1888.

We call it here the 'autumn-spring flower. The stems are coral-red, the leaves evergreen, and the blossoms grow in terminal umbels, white and fragrant, late in the fall, while the berries do not ripen until the following autumn, so that the beautiful plant bears flowers and fruit at one and the same time, and thus wears our national colours, the tricolour of Hungary." "Oh, where does it grow?

But sweet herbs may be made to serve another pleasing, an æsthetic purpose. Many of them may be used for ornament. A bouquet of the pale pink blossoms of thyme and the delicate flowers of marjoram, the fragrant sprigs of lemon balm mixed with the bright yellow umbels of sweet fennel, the finely divided leaves of rue and the long glassy ones of bergamot, is not only novel in appearance but in odor.

Its roots are long, spindle-shaped, fleshy, and sometimes weigh three pounds; its stems stout, herbaceous, fluted, often more than 4 feet tall, and hollow; its leaves long-stalked, frequently 3 feet in length, reddish purple at the clasping bases, and composed, in the larger ones, of numerous small leaflets, in three principal groups, which are each subdivided into three lesser groups; its flowers yellowish or greenish, small and numerous, in large roundish umbels; its seeds pale yellow, membranous-edged, oblong flattened on one side, convex on the other, which is marked with three conspicuous ribs.

There was a strong sweet perfume in the air like the scent of almonds, for the white thorn was now expanding its umbels of aromatic flowers, and there was just enough breeze to bear their fragrance throughout the whole atmosphere.

Like celery seed, parsley seed ripens very irregularly, some umbels being ready to cut from one to three weeks earlier than others. This quality of the plant may be bred out by keeping the earliest maturing seed separate from the later maturing and choosing this for producing subsequent seed crops.

The rains of August had ceased and their lavish abundance had filled brook and river and left the world a garden of wild aster and goldenrod, with red apples swinging from the trees, massed umbels of dark elderberries, and pink and purple grapes ripening in the sun. Our satisfaction with everything was unbounded.