. Flowers and their pedigrees. ng from caterpillars into full-fledged insects,without once effecting a cross with the remainder oftheir congeners among the snows of the Rocky Moun-tains or in the chilly plains of sub-Arctic far as they themselves know, the)* are the only 196 Flowers and their Pedigrees. representatives of their kind now remaining on thewhole earth, left behind like the ark on Ararat amidthe helpless ruins of an antediluvian world. Well,what these Mount Washington butterflies are amonginsects, that are our pretty wild tulips here amongEnglish flowers. They remain to
. Flowers and their pedigrees. ng from caterpillars into full-fledged insects,without once effecting a cross with the remainder oftheir congeners among the snows of the Rocky Moun-tains or in the chilly plains of sub-Arctic far as they themselves know, the)* are the only 196 Flowers and their Pedigrees. representatives of their kind now remaining on thewhole earth, left behind like the ark on Ararat amidthe helpless ruins of an antediluvian world. Well,what these Mount Washington butterflies are amonginsects, that are our pretty wild tulips here amongEnglish flowers. They remain to us as isolated relicsof an order that has long passed away ; and they helpus to rebuild with fuller certainty the strange half-un-deciphered history of the years that were dead andgone long before written books had yet begun to be. A Family History. 197 A FAMILY HISTORY. ALTHOUGH the roses, like many other highly respect-able modern families, cannot claim for themselves anyremarkable antiquity—their tribe is only known, with. Fig. 43.—Common Cinquefoil. certainty, to date back some three or four millions ofyears, to the tertiary period of geology—the)- haveyet in main- respects one of the most interesting and 198 Flowers and their Pedigrees. instructive histories among all the annals of Englishplants. In a comparatively short space of time theyhave managed to assume the most varied forms ; andtheir numerous transformations are well attested forus by the great diversity of their existing representa-tives. Some of them have produced extremely beau-tiful and showy flowers, as is the case with the cultivatedroses of our gardens, as well as with the dog-roses,the sweet-briars, the may, the blackthorn, and themeadow-sweet of our hedges, our copses, and ouropen fields. Others have developed edible fruits, likethe pear, the apple, the apricot, the peach, the nectar-ine, the cherry, the strawberry, the raspberry, and thephim ; while yet others again, which are less service-able to
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1880, booksubjectplantse, bookyear1884
