CHAPTER XII. PLANTS. FLOWERLESS PLANTS-SPORULES-LICHENS-FUNGUSES-SEA-WEEDS AND OTHER ALGE-FERNS-GRASSES-PALMS-ALOE-PLANTSTULIPACEOUS PLANTS-TULIP-FLOWERS-ORCHIDS-THE WATERSOLDIER AND VALISNERIA-CHARACTERISTICS OF ENDOGENS AND EXOGENS-CONE-BEARING TREES AURACARIA AND NORFOLK ISLAND PINE-THE NETTLE FAMILY-THE NETTLE STING-THE COW-TREE-THE BANYAN-TREE-THE PITCHER-PLANT—THE RAFFLESIA-THE PRIMROSE FAMILY-THE NIGHTSHADE FAMILYTHE CACTI-MANGROVES-TEA-PLANTS-CAMELIAS-MAGNOLIA AND LIRIODENDRON-SILK-COTTON-TREES AND ADANSONIA-VICTORIA REGIA AND OTHER WATER-LILIES-THE FORMS AND MORAL INFLUENCES OF FLOWERS. THE simplest plants have no flowers or seeds, and are propagated from exceedingly minute bodies called sporules.. They exhibit little of the breadth of feature, the grandeur of form, the brilliance of colouring, and the complication of organism which distinguish the higher grades of plants. Some appear to the naked eye mere specks or powder; some mere slime or mucus; some mere clusters of minute threads or minute cells; and some the seeming moulderings of stones or random dashes of green paint. Yet even these, and much more the larger kinds, perform high offices in the world's economy. "They serve to complete and to keep up the integrity of the vegetable creation, whether it be by decomposing putrid and fecal matters, or by preparing a soil fit for vegetables of a higher order. They are scattered over all cli mates and all quarters of the world, replenishing both earth and sea with vegetable life, and ascending even into the regions of the air by the very levity of their sporules, to be wafted on the winds till, drenched with moisture, they descend again towards the earth, ready to cling to the soil that suits them, if it should be even the surface of the flinty rock, or to spread themselves over mountains of eternal snow, or to immerse themselves in the waters of the ocean." The chief families of them are lichens, funguses, sea-weeds, fresh-water-weeds, mosses, horse-tails, and ferns. The sporules of the smallest ones, and even those of some of the larger ones, are produced in immense numbers, and multiply with amazing rapidity. A single pouch of a dust fungus, such as that of smut, though the pouch itself is quite or almost microscopic, has been computed to contain no fewer than ten millions of sporules. Lichens are the primal disintegrators of hard rocks -the primal formers of all dry and undrifted soils. No fewer than between four hundred and five hundred kinds of them inhabit Britain. They look very mean to the naked eye, but display many a gorgeous magnificence through the microscope. They are the small, patchy, leathery, crumpled looking things everywhere seen on rocks, the trunks of trees, and the bare surfaces of barren ground. They grow where no other plants could get a hold; and in alpine regions they flourish at altitudes up to the very verge of perpetual snow. They have a boring apparatus for infixing themselves into the hardest rock, and a spongy texture for absorbing and retaining moisture; and they spend their existence in compounding particles of rock and molecules of moisture into a sort of living paste; so that, when they die, they bequeath their remains as a primal stratum of soil. The first ones are followed by larger ones or by mosses, and these by ferns or by grasses, and these again by larger plants and larger, till at length the humblest lichens are succeeded by the loftiest trees. "Sporules to us invisible, can find On the rude rock the bed that fits their kind; Funguses differ much in both appearance and constitution from all other plants, and have been regarded by some naturalists, though erroneously, as possessing an intermediate nature between plants and animals. Between two thousand and three thousand species are known. They range in size from a point scarcely visible by the naked eye to an umbrella-like body nearly three feet in circumference. They delight in moist shady situations, and grow on dead trees, on the decaying bark of living trees, on the leaves of all plants, on decomposing animal products, on the surface of fermented liquids, and on all other substances in a transition state between the organic and the inorganic; and they have been appropriately designated "the scavengers of the world," sweeping away the putridities and putrific gases which, if allowed to accumulate, would seriously impair the health of the animal kingdom. They spring into being and do all their work with prodigious rapidity. Crowds of them are often developed in a single night; and though most live several days or longer, some live only a few hours, and some only a few minutes. All have a peculiar odour, which instantly and strongly indicates their presence; and as many as are large enough to have been subjected to anatomical examination and chemical analysis, have both a fleshy texture and a fleshy nature; so that they may be compared variously to muscle, gelatine, leather, sponge, cork, and soft wood, but never to anything herbaceous. Some which abound in cellars, caves, and mines, are beautifully phosphorescent in the dark, and give to natural subterranean arches the appearance of enchanted vaults, gorgeous all over with indescribable splendour. A few live in the interior of plants, and are analogous to intestinal worms; and the sporules of some, or perhaps of many, are supposed, or have been all but proved, to circulate in the fluids of living animals, ever ready to develop themselves in certain kinds of disease or at death. Some funguses constitute the mildew, the smut, and the rust of corn-plants. Some are the damp, thready, webbed, malodorous patches on unhealthy green crops. Some are the mould of pastes, jellies, fruits, and bread. Some are the colouring matter of red snow and of other extraordinary onfalls. Some form on healthy grounds and hilly pastures the remarkable circular belts of deep verdure popularly called fairy rings. Some are the curious objects known as puff-balls,-discharging their millions of sporules in visible form, like puffs of very fine powder. And multitudes are the tubercular and stool-shaped bodies called mushrooms, a few of which are eatable; while all the rest are acrid or poisonous, and even the eatable ones liable to become noxious by the imbibition of putrid matters in their vicinity. The most pleasant fungus is the truffle, shaped like an egg or a kidney, with a sort of warty surface, growing out of sight within the soil, possessing a highly aromatic and delicious flesh as firm as the kernel of an almond, and served up as a rare luxury at the tables of the wealthy, either roasted in a fresh state somewhat like potatoes, or dried and dressed as an ingredient in soups and ragouts. But even this, when not taken at the very pitch of proper ripeness, rapidly becomes as disgusting a thing as urinous smell and wormy putrescence can make it. We care not to be a little outspoken here; for we would warn every person against ever putting a fungus of any kind to his mouth as decidedly unsafe. Funguses have a mission, not at all to feed man, but ever and eagerly to absorb from the ground and the atmosphere things which might injure his health. Sea-weeds and flowerless fresh-water-weeds are the chief vegetable wonders of the waters. But they have scarcely one character in common except frondage in the place of foliage; and this itself is in some of them gelatinous, in others thread-like and jointed, and in others leather-like and jointless. Their colours are lively, and vary from the lowest green to the highest red or purple. Some live only a few hours, and others live during several years. Some are so small that |