16.  Taking then this re-arranged group, Mentha, Monacha, and Draconida, as a sufficiently natural and convenient one, I will briefly give the essentially botanical relations of the three families.

Mentha and Monacha agree in being essentially hooded flowers, the upper petal more or less taking the form of a cup, helmet or hood, which conceals the tops of the stamens.  Of the three lower petals, the lowest is almost invariably the longest; it sometimes is itself divided again into two, but may be best thought of as single, and with the two lateral ones, distinguished in the Menthae as the apron and the side pockets.

Plate XII. represents the most characteristic types of the blossoms of Menthae, in the profile and front views, all a little magnified.  The upper two are white basil, purple spotted—­growing here at Brantwood always with two terminal flowers.  The two middle figures are the purple-spotted dead nettle, Lamium maculatum; and the two lower, thyme:  but I have not been able to draw these as I wanted, the perspectives of the petals being too difficult, and inexplicable to the eye even in the flowers themselves without continually putting them in changed positions.

17.  The Menthae are in their structure essentially quadrate plants; their stems are square, their leaves opposite, their stamens either four or two, their seeds two-carpeled.  But their calices are five-sepaled, falling into divisions of two and three; and the flowers, though essentially four-petaled, may divide either the upper or lower petal, or both, into two lobes, and so present a six-lobed outline.  The entire plants, but chiefly the leaves, are nearly always fragrant, and always innocent.  None of them sting, none prick, and none poison.

18.  The Draconids, easily recognizable by their aspect, are botanically indefinable with any clearness or simplicity.  The calyx may be five- or four-sepaled; the corolla, five- or four-lobed; the stamens may be two, four, four with a rudimentary fifth, or five with the two anterior ones longer than the other three!  The capsule may open by two, three, or four valves,—­or by pores; the seeds, generally numerous, are sometimes solitary, and the leaves may be alternate, opposite, or verticillate.

19.  Thus licentious in structure, they are also doubtful in disposition.  None that I know of are fragrant, few useful, many more or less malignant, and some parasitic.  The following piece of a friend’s letter almost makes me regret my rescue of them from the dark kingdom of Kora:—­

“...  And I find that the Monacha Rosea (Red Rattle is its name, besides the ugly one) is a perennial, and several of the other draconidae, foxglove, etc., are biennials, born this year, flowering and dying next year, and the size of roots is generally proportioned to the life of plants; except when artificial cultivation develops the root specially, as in turnips, etc.