[_Love out their hour_. l. 456. The vegetable passion of love is agreeably seen in the flower of the parnassia, in which the males alternately approach and recede from the female, and in the flower of nigella, or devil in the bush, in which the tall females bend down to their dwarf husbands. But I was this morning surprised to observe, amongst Sir Brooke Boothby's valuable collection of plants at Ashbourn, the manifest adultery of several females of the plant Collinsonia, who had bent themselves into contact with the males of other flowers of the same plant in their vicinity, neglectful of their own. Sept. 16. See additional notes, No. XXXVIII.] [_Unfolds his larva-form_. l. 458. The flower bursts forth from its larva, the herb, naked and perfect like a butterfly from its chrysolis; winged with its corol; wing-sheathed by its calyx; consisting alone of the organs of reproduction. The males, or stamens, have their anthers replete with a prolific powder containing the vivifying fovilla: in the females, or pistils, exists the ovary, terminated by the tubular stigma. When the anthers burst and shed their bags of dust, the male fovilla is received by the prolific lymph of the stigma, and produces the seed or egg, which is nourished in the ovary. System of Vegetables translated from Linneus by the Lichfield Society, p. 10.] XII. 1. "If prouder branches with exuberance rude Point their green gems, their barren shoots protrude; Wound them, ye SYLPHS! with little knives, or bind A wiry ringlet round the swelling rind; 465 Bisect with chissel fine the root below, Or bend to earth the inhospitable bough. So shall each germ with new prolific power Delay the leaf-bud, and expand the flower; Closed in the _Style_ the tender pith shall end, 470 The lengthening Wood in circling _Stamens_ bend; The smoother Rind its soft embroidery spread In vaulted _Petals_ o'er their fertile bed; While the rough Bark, in circling mazes roll'd, Forms the green _Cup_ with many a wrinkled fold; 475 And each small bud-scale spreads its foliage hard, Firm round the callow germ, a _Floral Guard_. [_Wound them, ye Sylphs!_ l. 463. Mr. Whitmill advised to bind some of the most vigorous shoots with strong wire, and even some of the large roots; and Mr. Warner cuts, what he calls a wild worm about the body of the tree, or scores the bark quite to the wood like a screw with a sharp knife. Bradley on Gardening, Vol. II. p. 155. Mr. Fitzgerald produced flowers and fruit on wall trees by cutting off a part of the bark. Phil. Trans. Ann. 1761. M. Buffon produced the same effect by a straight bandage put round a branch, Act. Paris, Ann. 1738, and concludes that an ingrafted branch bears better from its vessels being compressed by the callous.