The crocus blossom offers the advantage of largeness to those who may wish to carefully study the curious organs of plant flowers. The most conspicuous external feature of the common crocus is the long-tubed purple perianth, divided into six segments, or pieces, constituting the vase-like flower head. Within the floral envelope are contained first the ovary, surmounted by a style which traverses the whole length of the long, narrow tube of the perianth, and is crowned just above the point where the tube expands into its petal-like segments, by a curious three-cleft stigma, each lobe of which is club-shaped or wedge-shaped, and jagged at its extremity. Some little distance below the level of the stigma are reared the anthers of the stamens, three in number. When the pollen grains from these organs have fertilized the ovary, by the agency of the stigma and style, the office of the perianth is fulfilled, and it, with the stamens and stigma, begins to wither and disappear. Then the ovary is enlarged, and rising on a slender stalk from the top of the bulbous root on which it was seated when the floral envelope was present, becomes exposed to the air, and ripens the seeds within its three-celled capsule. In some of our woods in January may occasionally be found, though it is not widely distributed, the green hellebore (_Helleborus viridis_). The five oval-shaped, green lobes which form the floral envelope are not, as at first might be supposed, petals but sepals, the much smaller petals, eight or ten in number, occupying the inner portion of the blossom, and immediately surrounding the numerous stamens. These petals, or, as they might be called, nectaries, contain a poisonous honey, and the whole plant, indeed—leaves and flowers—is very poisonous. We may perchance, before the month is out, light upon the pretty blue blossoms of the field speedwell (_Veronica agrestis_), with its hairy, deeply-indented and somewhat heart-shaped leaves, placed in opposite pairs along its branching stems, or, perhaps, upon its relative, _Veronica buxbaumii_. In wood and copse before the close of January, we may note the sylvan precursor of the green splendor of the later spring—the leafing honeysuckle, the earliest harbinger of sylvan verdure in the days to come. The little leaves have not yet revealed their size and form, and without close examination the light-brown, spiry twigs would appear to wear only their normal wintry aspect. But if we look narrowly at them we shall note the tiny spots of green at the stem knots, where the minute leaves are struggling to emerge from the bud cases. Earliest in leaf among the shrubs and trees of the hedgerow and forest, the woodbine is the latest in flower—spreading, even late in autumn, its sweet fragrance through thicket, copse and dell. * * * * * Childhood is the sleep of reason.—_Rousseau._ BOTANICAL NOTES. By PROF. J. H. MONTGOMERY.