The fetid hellebore (helleborus fœtidus) is not a common plant with us, but we find it sparingly in one or two places; and though a plant indigenous to Britain, yet it is not improbable that it has strayed from cultivation, and become naturalized in many of the places in which we now find it. Its uses as an herb of celebrity for some complaints of cattle occasioned its being fostered in many a cottage garden long since erased, where the good wife was the simple doctress of the village, when perhaps mortality was not more extensive than in these days of greater pretension and display. Modern practice yet retains preparations of this herb, but it appears that, from the powerful manner in which they act, great discretion is necessary in their administration. This hellebore is one of our few plants that present us with a dull, unsightly, unpleasing blossom. We have many with a corolla so small as to be little noticed; but this plant, and the fetid iris (iris fœtidissima), produce blossoms, that would generally be considered as darksome and cheerless. There is no part of a vegetable which we usually admire more than its flowers, for that endless variety of colors, shades, forms, and odors, with which they are endowed; yet the utility of the blossom is by no means obvious. Linnæus calls the corolla the arras, the tapestry of the plant; and we are perfectly sensible that the blossom in very many instances is essential in various ways to securing and perfecting the germen; that it often contains the food of multitudes of insects, which feed on the pollen, the honey, or the germen; and that the odor emitted by it leads frequently various creatures to the object in request, and by their agency the fecundation and perfecting of the seeds are often effected: but we are astonished at the elaborate mechanism and splendor of some species, and see the whole race of creation, with the exception of man, utterly regardless of them. Butterflies and other insects will bask on expanded flowers, and frequent their disks, but it is in wantonness, or to feed on the sweet liquors they contain. The carpenter bee,[16] that every summer cuts its little circular patches in such quantities from my roses to line its nest in the old garden door, selects the green leaves only, chiefly from the China, Provence, and damask kinds,[17] passing over the petals of their blossoms as useless. That splendid insect the rose-beetle[18] (cetonia aurata), that beds and bathes in sweetness, will partially eat the flowers of some species of roses, and “lap the nectar they produce;” and a few others nibble a little; but the liliaceous tribes, and other glorious flowers, as far as we know, furnish to insects no supply, but expand, wither, and die, unnoticed but by the eye of man alone. Flowers that are grand, gay, cheerful or beautiful, predominate infinitely over those that are of a sombre hue or gloomy aspect. Employment and occupation were as much the design, as