hen on the blood sweet nectar she bestows,
The scented blood in little bubbles rose;
Little as rainy drops, which fluttering fly,
Borne by the winds, along a lowering sky,
Short time ensued, till where the blood was shed,
A flower began to rear its purple head

Such, as on Punic apples is revealed
Or in the filmy rind but half concealed,
Still here the fate of lonely forms we see,
_So sudden fades the sweet Anemone_.
The feeble stems to stormy blasts a prey
Their sickly beauties droop, and pine away
The winds forbid the flowers to flourish long
Which owe to winds their names in Grecian song.

The concluding couplet alludes to the Grecian name of the flower
([Greek: anemos], _anemos_, the wind.)

It is said of the Anemone that it never opens its lips until Zephyr
kisses them. Sir William Jones alludes to its short-lived beauty.

Youth, like a thin anemone, displays
His silken leaf, and in a morn decays.

Horace Smith speaks of

The coy anemone that ne'er discloses
Her lips until they're blown on by the wind

Plants open out their leaves to breathe the air just as eagerly as they
throw down their roots to suck up the moisture of the earth. Dr. Linley,
indeed says, "they feed more by their leaves than their roots." I lately
met with a curious illustration of the fact that plants draw a larger
proportion of their nourishment from light and air than is commonly
supposed. I had a beautiful convolvulus growing upon a trellis work in
an upper verandah with a south-western aspect. The root of the plant was
in pots. The convolvulus growing too luxuriantly and encroaching too
much upon the space devoted to a creeper of another kind, I separated
its upper branches from the root and left them to die. The leaves began
to fade the second day and most of them were quite dead the third or
fourth day, but two or three of the smallest retained a sickly life for
some days more. The buds or rather chalices outlived the leaves. The
chalices continued to expand every morning, for--I am afraid to say how
long a time--it might seem perfectly incredible. The convolvulus is a
plant of a rather delicate character and I was perfectly astonished at
its tenacity of life in this case. I should mention that this happened
in the rainy season and that the upper part of the creeper was partially
protected from the sun.

The Anemone seems to have been a great favorite with Mrs