I turn to an unopened bud, putting on a lower power, and viewing it as an opaque object, with reflected light by the aid of the Lieberkuhn. Here are the parting sepals of the calyx, painted with rose-pink and pea-green, and studded all over with the knobbed hairs just noticed; the coloured surface is rough with granules, but it is the roughness of glass, for every knob gleams and sparkles with light. The corolla, a little white ball, displays its petals smoothly folded over each other, and their surface has the same appearance of granular glass as that of the calyx.
But now let me examine this blossom just expanded this morning,—the very first of the season, by the way. I must have a low power for this, eighty diameters, or so. Oh, how exquisite! The little saucer of five oval petals, each of snowy whiteness, bearing its bow of lovely crimson specks, with a spot of gamboge-yellow for the chord, and the whole sparkling with glassy points as before. The pale red germen in the centre, rising into two points of snow, their rosy tips pressed close together, as if the twins were kissing. The ten stamens, five short alternating with five long ones, and each bearing its pretty kidney-shaped anther of pale scarlet. No; all are not kidney-shaped; for here is one which has burst, and the grains of red pollen are seen covering its rough purple surface; and here is one stamen from the point of which the anther has gone, leaving only two or three pollen-grains adhering. Behind all, I see the sepals of the calyx, peeping out between the petals, and forming a fine dark background for them, and for the longer filaments.
And now I say to my readers, one and all,—you may not have the opportunity to examine the glorious tropical Orchids, or the gorgeous Flamboyant, but go and pluck a flower of the London-pride, and you will have before your eyes such a production of Divine handiwork as may well excite the admiration and adoration of an angel.
XI.
PARASITES.
Vast as is this round world on which we live, its surface is not nearly large enough for all the living creatures which are ordained to inhabit it. Multitudes of animals do not walk on the ground, or swim in the waters, or fly in the air, but find the scene of their abode on or in the bodies of other animals. Multitudes of plants do not grow out of the soil, but attach themselves to other plants, and draw their sustenance and support thence. Nay, there are parasites upon parasites, and this, according to Hood, in an infinitely descending series.
"Great fleas have little fleas
Upon their backs to bite 'em;
And little fleas have lesser fleas;
And so ad infinitum."
Perhaps the poet's imagination ran a little ahead of his science here; but the idea of an infinite succession of parasites, like nests of pill-boxes, is surely a funny one. There is nothing funny, however, in the thought "that even man," who was made in the image of God, "bears about in his vital organs various forms of loathsome creatures, which riot on his fluids, and consume the very substance of his tissues while ensconced where no efforts of his can dislodge them, no application destroy them. So it is; and few physical facts are better calculated to humble man, and stain the pride of his glory, than to feel that he may at any moment be nourishing a horrid tape-worm in his alimentary canal, or that his muscles may be filled with millions of microscopic trichinæ.