The Wild Carrot (_Daucus Carota_) of the same order is also common in pastures. It is an erect plant, with a tap root, and a branching stem from one to two feet high. The lower leaves are two or three times pinnate, with segments pinnately divided into narrow lobes. The upper leaves are much smaller, with narrower divisions. The umbels are large and terminal, on long stalks. The rays are numerous and crowded; the middle ones being shorter, with pale purple flowers; and the outer ones longer, with white flowers. After flowering the rays close together, forming a dense, globular mass, or an inverted cone, concave at the top, thus more or less covering the fruits, in which they are aided by the long, narrow lobes of both the primary and secondary bracts. The fruits are covered with little hooked prickles. [Illustration: THE BURNET SAXIFRAGE.] The Devil's-bit Scabious (_Scabiosa succisa_--order _Dipsaceæ_) is very common in the pastures of almost all parts of Britain, and much resembles the Field Scabious (p. 290) in general habit. Its stem is erect, branching, from one to two feet high. The radical leaves are stalked, ovate or oblong, and generally quite entire; and the stem-leaves, which are few, are of the same general form, but are sessile, and sometimes slightly toothed. The heads of purple-blue flowers are on long peduncles, and each one is surrounded at the base by about three whorls of bracts which decrease in length inwards, the outer and longest being about as long as the flowers. The flowers of the head are all nearly of the same size and form. Each one is enclosed in a tubular whorl of united bracts with small teeth. This whorl might easily be mistaken for a calyx by those who are not acquainted with the general features of the flowers of this order, but the calyx is really combined with the ovary, its four bristly teeth being very conspicuous round the top of the fruit. The corolla is tubular, deeply cleft into four lobes; and four stamens are inserted into its tube. The fruit is small and seedlike, and does not split. This plant flowers from July to September or October. [Illustration: THE WILD CARROT.] Coming now to the _Compositæ_, we have a considerable number of meadow flowers to describe; and we assume that the reader has already made himself acquainted with the nature of the flowers of this order as given on p. 175. If such is not the case, we advise him to refresh his memory with regard to them, in order that the terms used in the following descriptions may be thoroughly understood. [Illustration: THE DEVIL'S-BIT SCABIOUS.]