GAULTHERIA PROCUMBENS.

Partridge Berry.

PLATE XXII.

THERE HERE is no soil so inhospitable, that it does not afford the means of sustenance and growth to some vegetable tenant. The most arid and penurious spots of earth not only give support to a variety of plants, but they are even selected by certain species, which make them their permanent residence, and thrive better in the midst of poverty and drought than they could in the most fertile and luxuriant situations. The Gaultheria procumbens is one of those hardy and abstemious plants, which are better satisfied with the clear air of the mountains, than with a deep or mellow soil. It is found growing in large beds under the shade of shrubs and trees upon elevated tracts of ground, or upon the sand and gravel of the driest forests. Its bright evergreen leaves seem adapt

ed for ready absorption and slow perspiration, so that it derives from the dews and rain, what the earth fails to supply it.

The Gaultheria procumbens is remarkable for the different periods of producing its flowers and fruit. It is found in blossom not only in the early part of spring, but in the last weeks of summer, and the fruit is found ripe at corresponding periods. Whether this appearance is the product of different shoots, or whether the same stems blossom twice in a year, I am unable to say. I have, however, met with beds of the Gaultheria in full flower in August and September, quite as frequently as in May. I have also seen the fruit in the market at various periods of the summer, fall, and spring.

The plant takes its vulgar names from the fruit, and is denominated in different parts of the United States, Partridge berry, Chequer berry, Box berry, &c. Its domestic use has also given it the name of Mountain tea.

The genus Gaultheria is beautifully singular and distinct in its character, derived from the form of its fruit. The calyx is five cleft, calyculated, or bibracteate at base. Corolla ovate. Capsule five celled, invested with the baccated calyx.

The species procumbens has a prostrate stem with ascending branches. Leaves in a terminal tuft, obovate with a few ciliate serratures. Flowers axillary.

Class Decandria, order Monogynia, Natural orders Bicornes Linn. Erica Juss.

The stem, or as it might be called root of this plant is horizontal, woody, often a quarter of an inch in thickness. The branches are ascending, but a few inches high, round and somewhat downy. Leaves scattered, near the extremities of the branches, evergreen, coriaceous, shining, oval or obovate, acute at both ends, revolute at the edge, and furnished with a few small serratures, each terminating in a bristle. Flowers axillary, drooping, on round downy stalks. Outer calyx of two concave, heart shaped leafets, which may with perhaps more propriety be called bractes. Inner calyx monophyllous, white, cleft into five roundish subacute segments. Corolla white, urceolate, five angled, contracted at the mouth, the border divided into five short, reflexed segments, Filaments white, hairy, bent in a semicircular manner to accommodate themselves to the cavity between the corolla and germ. Anthers oblong, orange coloured, ending in two double horns, bursting outwardly, for their whole length above the filaments,

and not opening by pores as in Pyrola. Pollen white. Germ roundish, depressed, five angled, resting on a reddish, ten toothed, glandular ring. Style erect, straight. Stigma simple, moist. The fruit is a small, five celled capsule, invested with the calyx, which becomes large, round, and fleshy, having the appearance of a bright scarlet berry.

If the aroma or odour and also the taste of plants were susceptible of description in as definite language as their proportions and form, the sensible qualities of many vegetables might afford new grounds for generalizing and combining them together. The aromatic flavour of the Partridge berry, which cannot easily be mistaken by those who have once tasted it, may be recognised in a variety of other plants, whose botanical habits are very dissimilar. It exists very exactly in some of the other species of the same genus, particularly in Gaultheria hispidula; also in Spirœa ulmaria and the root of Spirea lobata. It is particularly distinct in the bark of the Sweet birch, Betula lenta, one of our most useful and interesting trees.

This taste and odour reside in a volatile oil, which is easily separated by distillation. The essential oil of Gaultheria, which is often kept in our druggists' shops, is of a pale or greenish white