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 of Veronica spicata; then, at the nearest opening into the wood, a little foxglove in its first delight of shaking out its bells; then—­what next does the Doctor say?—­a snapdragon? we must go back into the garden for that—­here is a goodly crimson one, but what the little speedwell will think of him for a relative I can’t think!—­a mullein?—­that we must do without for the moment; a monkey flower?—­that we will do without, altogether; a lady’s slipper?—­say rather a goblin’s with the gout! but, such as the flower-cobbler has made it, here is one of the kind that people praise, out of the greenhouse,—­and yet a figwort we must have, too; which I see on referring to Loudon, may be balm-leaved, hemp-leaved, tansy-leaved, nettle-leaved, wing-leaved, heart-leaved, ear-leaved, spear-leaved, or lyre-leaved.  I think I can find a balm-leaved one, though I don’t know what to make of it when I’ve got it, but it’s called a ‘Scorodonia’ in Sowerby, and something very ugly besides;—­I’ll put a bit of Teucrium Scorodonia in, to finish:  and now—­how will my young Proserpina arrange her bouquet, and rank the family relations to their contentment?