* * * * * The characters we have just enumerated apply, or the majority of them, to the interesting family of the Gentianaceæ--a natural group of plants, nearly all remarkable for their bitter, febrifugal, and anti-scrofulous properties. The flowering cymes of the common centaury are very frequently employed as a substitute for the medicinal gentian, so well known as a valuable tonic. The medicinal gentian is the _Gentiana lutea_,--a plant growing about three feet high,--which thrives abundantly on the Pyrenees, and the Alps of Switzerland and Austria, at an elevation of 3000 to 5000 feet. It is not, however, so common now as formerly on the Alpine heights, owing probably to its great consumption, but it is spreading into many districts of Central Europe. Frequent enough in the vicinity of Paris is the _Chlora perforata_, a gentian remarkable for its glaucous leaves and yellow terminal flowers. The _Gentiana kurroo_ of the Himalayas, and the British species, _Gentiana campestris_ and _Gentiana amarella_, possess the tonic properties of the family. The _Cheritta_ of the pharmacopœia is the herb and root of _Agathotes chirayta_ (_Ophelia chirata_), a herbaceous plant which flourishes in the Himalayas. * * * * * We must not omit a reference to a Lilliputian gentian, the _filiform gentian_ of Linnæus, and the _Exacum filiforme_ or _Cicendia filiformis_ of other botanical authorities. Its stem, from two and a half to four inches in length, is embellished with radical oblong leaves, disposed in fours, and short caulinary leaves, opposite and linear; the corolla is yellow, the calyx has four triangular lobes; the stamens also are four. It is this predominant number which has induced some botanists to elevate our little gentian into a species of _Exacum_ or _Cicendia_,--two genera, of which the first was named by Adamson, the second by De Candolle. As for the tiny _Gentiana pusilla_, or _Exacum pusillum_, we may look upon it as a simple variety of the _Exacum filiforme_, differing from the latter only in its shorter and feebler stem, in the somewhat narrower divisions of its calyx, and the tint of its corolla, which is of a paler yellow, sometimes inclining to rose. Botanists, or lovers of flowers, may grow as passionately fond of gentians as some persons do of tulips or hyacinths. But it is not in England or Scotland, it is in the Alpine pastures of Switzerland only, that you can hope to satisfy your _Gentianomania_. AN ALPINE EXCURSION. Permit me, dear reader, to set down a few hints, in case you should at any time be disposed to make a pilgrimage into the Golden Land, or El Dorado, of botanists and geologists. [Illustration: FIG. 59.--An Alpine Landscape.]