Next, in the potato, we have the scarcely innocent underground stem of one of a tribe set aside for evil;[6] having the deadly nightshade for its queen, and including the henbane, the witch’s mandrake, and the worst natural curse of modern civilization--tobacco. And the strange thing about this tribe is that, though thus set aside for evil, they are not a group distinctly separate from those that are happier in function. There is nothing in other tribes of plants like the bean blossom; but there is another family with forms and structure closely connected with this venomous one. Examine the purple and yellow bloom of the common hedge nightshade; you will find it constructed exactly like some of the forms of the cyclamen; and, getting this clew, you will find at last the whole poisonous and terrible group to be--sisters of the primulas! The nightshades are, in fact, primroses with a curse upon them; and a sign set in their petals by which the deadly and condemned flowers may always be known from the innocent ones--that the stamens of the nightshades are between the lobes, and of the primulas, opposite the lobes of the corolla. Next, side by side, in the celery and radish, you have the two great groups of umbelled and cruciferous plants; alike in conditions of rank among herbs: both flowering in clusters; but the umbelled group, flat, the crucifers, in spires: both of them mean and poor in blossom, and losing what beauty they have by too close crowding; both of them having the most curious influence on human character in the temperate zones of the earth, from the days of the parsley crown and hemlock drink, and mocked Euripidean chervil, until now: but chiefly among the northern nations, being especially plants that are of some humble beauty, and (the crucifers) of endless use, when they are chosen and cultivated; but that run to wild waste, and are signs of neglected ground, in their rank or ragged leaves, and meagre stalks, and pursed or podded seed-clusters. Capable, even under cultivation, of no perfect beauty, though reaching some subdued delightfulness in the lady’s smock and the wall-flower; for the most part, they have every floral quality meanly, and in vain--they are white, without purity; golden, without preciousness; redundant, without richness; divided, without fineness; massive, without strength; and slender, without grace. Yet think over that useful vulgarity of theirs; and of the relations of German and English peasant character to its food of kraut and cabbage (as of Arab character to its food of palm-fruit), and you will begin to feel what purposes of the forming spirit are in these distinctions of species.