y differ in subordinate
points. It is chiefly (A) in the form of the corolla, (B) in the number of
the stamens, (C) in the consistence of the rind of the fruit, (D) in its
form, (E) in the number of the seeds it contains, and (F) in the manner in
which the sepals are combined, that these differences consist."

2. The enumerative letters are of my insertion--otherwise the above
sentence is, word for word, Dr. Lindley's,--and it seems to me an
interesting and memorable one in the history of modern Botanical science.
For it appears from the tenor of it, that in a scientific botanist's mind,
six particulars, at least, in the character of a plant, are merely
'subordinate points,'--namely,

1. (F) The combination of its calyx,
2. (A) The shape of its corolla,
3. (B) The number of its stamens,
4. (D) The form of its fruit,
5. (C) The consistence of its shell,--and
6. (E) The number of seeds in it.

Abstracting, then, from the primary description, all the six inessential
points, I find the three essential ones left are, that the style is divided
into two lobes at the upper end, that a number of glandular hairs cover the
ovary, and that this latter contains two cells.

3. None of which particulars concern any reasonable mortal, looking at a
Foxglove, in the smallest degree. Whether hairs which he can't see are
glandular or bristly,--whether the green knobs, which are left when the
purple bells are gone, are divided into two lobes or two hundred,--and
whether the style is split, like a snake's tongue, into two lobes, or like
a rogue's, into any number--are merely matters of vulgar curiosity, which
he needs a microscope to discover, and will lose a day of his life in
discovering. But if any pretty young Proserpina, escaped from the Plutonic
durance of London, and carried by the tubular process, which replaces
Charon's boat, over the Lune at Lancaster, cares to come and walk on the
Coniston hills in a summer morning, when the eyebright is out on the high
fields, she may gather, with a little help from Brantwood garden, a bouquet
of the entire Foxglove tribe in flower, as it is at present defined, and
may see what they are like, altogether.

4. She shall gather: first, the Euphrasy, which makes the turf on the brow
of the hill glitter as if with new-fallen manna; then, from one of the blue
clusters on the top of the garden wall, the common bright blue Speedwell;
and, from the garden bed beneath, a dark blue spire o