Viburnum

“ Compound leaves sometimes occur. Stipules only appear in a few species of Lonicera, Sambucus and Viburnum; in the common Elder (Sambucus nigra) they are in some instances glandular and small, but in other cases larger and more leaf-like (upon long, well-developed shoots) ; in the Dwarf Elder (S. ebulus) they have the normal leaf-like form; in Viburnum opulus they are present as narrow lobes at the base of the petiole; in others they are completely absent. The leaves are frequently penninerved, rarely palminerved. The calyx, as in the Stellatæ and Aggregatæ, is often very insignificant. ”

“ There’s a chamaecyparis that forms a fluffy, green two-inch ball by the time it’s seven years old; a cone-shaped Norway spruce that rarely grows more than twelve inches tall; a one-foot rhododendron with deep-crimson trumpet flowers; a nonfruiting viburnum that makes a two-foot globe tightly packed with ivy-like leaves. There are junipers that form plush carpets; ericaceous evergreens with neat mounds of twinkling flowers over shiny teardrop leaves; deciduous shrubs with golden blooms, seeds in silky pea pods, and green stems that look leafy the year round. ”

“ This has been corrupted by the fur-traders and voyageurs into “Pembina;” hence, the name of a river which runs into the Red, and also he name of the celebrated but unsuccessful settlement of “Pembina,” formed by Lord Selkirk many years ago. Both took their names from this berry that grows in abundance in the neighbourhood. The botanical appellation of this curious shrub is Viburnum oxycoccos; but there is another species of the viburnum, which is also styled “oxycoccos.” The common “snowball bush” of our gardens is a plant of the same genus, and very like the “Pembina” both in leaf and flower. ”

“ Examples are found in Viburnum, Engl. Bot. t., 332, and the common Laurustinus, as also in Sambucus, Elder, t., 476. This mode of inflorescence agrees with a corymbus also in general aspect, but in the latter the primary stalks have no common centre, though the partial ones may sometimes be umbellate, which last case is precisely the reverse of a cyma.
Panicula, a Panicle, bears the flowers in a sort of loose subdivided bunch or cluster, without any order. ”

“ And when, after a long and happy life spent in bringing the world under the shadow of one umbrella, and in ruling it free from care, the warrior king Vikram entered the gloomy realms of Yama, from whom for mortals there is no escape, he left behind him a name that endured amongst men like the odour of the flower whose memory remains long after its form has mingled with the dust. ”

“ The Vicar stood aghast, with his smoking gun in his hand. It was no bird at all, but a youth with an extremely beautiful face, clad in a robe of saffron and with iridescent wings, across whose pinions great waves of colour, flushes of purple and crimson, golden green and intense blue, pursued one another as he writhed in his agony. Never had the Vicar seen such gorgeous floods of colour, not stained glass windows, not the wings of butterflies, not even the glories of crystals seen between prisms, no colours on earth could compare with them. ”

“ The rain was so plashing and streaming in rivulets among the mounds and stones of the burial ground of one of the most ancient and forgotten looking of such churches, when on a certain afternoon there came to the narrow soot-darkened Vicarage attached to it a tall, elderly man who wished to see and talk to the Vicar.
The Vicar in question was an old clergyman who had spent nearly fifty years in the silent, ecclesiastical-atmosphered small house. He was an unmarried man whose few relatives living in the far North of England were too poor and unenterprising to travel to London. ”

“ Far down in a hole in the snow lay Allarm. He was so bitten that he could not jump to his feet and, when Viggo lifted him, the blood dripped down on the white snow. His whole body shivered and [83] shook like an aspen leaf, but he licked Viggo's hand.
Just then Old Hans the Grenadier stood by Viggo's side. When he had gained his breath after his hurried run, the old man cried very angrily, "If I did what you deserve I should have to whip you, you little cub. Shame on you! Do you think it fit for a youngster like you to rush against a pack of wolves? ”

“ What difference has it made?
"We are out of it all," said the Vicar. "We live in an atmosphere of simple and permanent things, Birth and Toil, simple seed-time and simple harvest. The Uproar passes us by." He was always very great upon what he called the permanent things. "Things change," he would say, "but Humanity--_aere perennius_."
Thus the Vicar. He loved a classical quotation subtly misapplied. Below, Mrs. Skinner, inelegant but resolute, had involved herself curiously with Wilmerding's stile.
III. No one knows what the Vicar made of the Giant Puff-Balls. ”

“ SKULL OF VIVERRINE CAT.
a. The bony bar formed by the union of the frontal and jugal bones which complete the orbit behind.
Notwithstanding its ferocity this is by no means a large animal, being only thirty to forty-four inches long, without the tail, which is ten and a half to twelve and a half inches in length. “The ears are rather small and blunt; the pupil circular; the fur coarse and without any gloss; the limbs short and very strong.” The snout is narrow, and drawn out like that of a Civet, hence the name Viverrina. The colour is grey, lighter beneath, and banded and spotted with black. ”

“ The pony, frightened and mud-bespattered, but not very seriously hurt, as soon as it was released from the harness, scrambled out of the ditch. The light basket-chaise was, without much difficulty, raised to its right position; and Vibert helped to lift up Emmie, who was half covered with mud, and almost in hysterics with fear.
“Come, come, there’s nothing to be terrified at now; the danger is over. You’re not hurt, are you?” asked Vibert, with some anxiety, for he loved his sister next to himself, though, it must be confessed, with a considerable space between. ”

“ Remained the task of carrying the Vampire to Shanta-Shil the devotee. Having taken his sword, the Raja fearlessly climbed the tree, and ordering his son to stand away from below, clutched the Vampire’s hair with one hand, and with the other struck such a blow of the sword, that the bough was cut and the thing fell heavily upon the ground. Immediately on falling it gnashed its teeth and began to utter a loud wailing cry like the screams of an infant in pain. Vikram having heard the sound of its lamentations, was pleased, and began to say to himself, “This devil must be alive.” ”

“ A pretty doctrine, indeed, for a Brahman to hold. You might as well agree with me at once that the soul of man resides, when at home, either in a vein in the breast, or in the pit of his stomach, or that half of it is in a man’s brain and the other or reasoning half is in his heart, an organ of his body.”
“What has all this string of words to do with the matter, Vampire?” asked Raja Vikram angrily.
“Only,” said the demon laughing, “that in my opinion, as opposed to the Shastras and to Raja Vikram, that the beautiful Unmadini belonged, not to the head part but to the body part. ”

“ Child, what I felt at that moment I can scarcely say, but it was a sufficient punishment for all the sins I ever committed; and there we two were, I looking up at the viper, and the viper looking down upon me, flickering at me with its tongue. It was only the kindness of God that saved me: all at once there was a loud noise, the report of a gun, for a fowler was shooting at a covey of birds, a little way off in the stubble. Whereupon the viper sunk its head, and immediately made off over the ridge of the hill, down in the direction of the sea. ”

“ The young of the viper is born inside a membrane that bursts from off the young creature in three days; and at times the young viper eats its way out from the inside of the egg. The mother viper brings forth all its young in one day, twenty in number, and one at a time. The other serpents are externally oviparous, and their eggs are strung on to one another like a lady's necklace; after the dam has laid her eggs in the ground she broods over them, and hatches the eggs in the following year. ”

“ To fail twice was too much for Raja Vikram's temper, which was right kingly and somewhat hot. This time he bade his son strike the Baital's head with his sword. Then, more like a wounded bear of Himalaya than a prince who had established an era, he hurried up the tree, and directed a furious blow with his sabre at the Vampire's lean and calfless legs. The violence of the stroke made its toes loose their hold of the bough, and when it touched the ground, Dharma Dhwaj's blade fell heavily upon its matted brown hair. ”

“ While thus looking upwards, he unawares trod upon a Viper asleep just before his feet. The Viper, turning towards him, stung him; and he, falling into a swoon, said to himself, "Woe is me! that while I proposed to hunt another, am myself fallen unawares into the snares of death." ”

“ Another feature of the chalk-pit is the viper's bugloss. If, as Thoreau says, there is a flower for every mood of the mind, the viper's bugloss must surely belong to that mood which is associated with the pomps and splendours of the high summer noontide. Gorgeous and tropical in its colouring beyond all other British flowers, as it rears its bristly green spikes, studded profusely with the pink buds that are turning to an equally vivid blue, it seems instinct with the spirit of a fiery summer day. ”

“ Vipera.—The head is covered with small scales and a few larger shields. The eye is separated from the labials by small scales; the nasals are in contact with the rostral shield or separated by one naso-rostral. The scales of the body are strongly keeled; two rows of subcaudals on the short tail. This genus of about ten species with numerous local varieties ranges over Europe, Asia and the greater part of Africa. ”

“ Now herein probably Pliny, and many since have been mistaken; for the disruption of the membranes or skins, which include the young ones, conceiving a dilaceration of the matrix and belly of the Viper: and concluding from a casual dilaceration, a regular and constant disruption.
As for the Latine word Vipera, which in the Etymologie of Isidore promoteth this conceit; more properly it may imply vivipera. For whereas other Serpents lay Eggs, the Viper excludeth living Animals; and though the Cerastes be also viviparous, and we have found formed Snakes in the belly of the Cicilia or Slow-worm ”

“ It was formerly supposed to be an antidote against the bite of adders, and was sometimes called the viper’s plant. As to the etymology of the name Scorzonera, it is so evident, that it is difficult to understand how early writers, even Tournefort,103 have declared the origin of the word to be escorso, viper in Spanish or Catalan. Viper is in Spanish more commonly vibora.
There exists in Sicily a Scorzonera deliciosa, Gussone, whose very sugary root is used in the confection of bonbons and sherbets, at Palermo.104 How is it that its cultivation has not been tried? ”

“ This is noticeable in the African ‘nose-horned viper’ (Vipera nasicornis) , p. 322, where they present a curiously complicated structure.
Too minute to examine except under the magnifying-glass, or to attempt to illustrate, we can convey only a general idea of these curious viper scales, which to the touch are spinous, and rough as a coarse brush. They must form an unpleasant perch for a bird, if it be true that the latter is enticed by the horns of some vipers to come and peck at them, as at a worm. ”

“ I need not go into particulars, for I know perfectly well that this Maitland knows to a nicety how the thing was done. The Daboia Russellii, or Russell’s viper, is one of the best known and most deadly of Indian vipers. I procured one of these reptiles at the cost of great delay and some slight risk. That is the whole story. On the night of the murder I took the viper in a box and went down to the water-front, near the Darrow estate. Here I cut a small pole from a clump of alders, made a split in one end of it, and thrust it over the tail of the viper. ”

“ His heart was bitter, but the thought that Her Majesty's cruiser Amphion had discredited the Simoom vigia was balm to his inmost soul, as he turned to go below.
"Keep a bright look-out," he growled, and he left Green to consider the matter of vigias in general, and the Simoom vigia in particular.
For these vigias, the terror of seamen, are like malicious spirits. Some man has seen them, or has imagined them, and for ever after they bear sway in the minds of those who sail upon the great deep. ”

“ Sub-Fam. 4. Viverrinae.—Viverra includes the true Civets. The genus, save for one African species, is Oriental in range. The molar formula is the complete one for the Viverridae, viz. Pm 4/4 M 2/2. The secretion of the prescrotal gland of V. civetta yields the civet of commerce.
The "Rasse," genus Viverricula, has been separated generically from the true Civets. It is, remarkably enough, common to both Madagascar [12] and many parts of the Oriental region. It is, moreover, capable of climbing trees, which its relatives are not. It has no mane like Viverra and is of slighter build. ”

“ Miss Carstyle was beautiful, Vibart was young, and the days were long in his aunt’s spacious and distinguished house; but it was really the desire to know something more of Mr. Carstyle that led the young man to partake so often of that gentleman’s overdone mutton. Vibart’s imagination had been touched by the discovery that this little huddled-up man, instead of travelling with the wind, was persistently facing a domestic gale of considerable velocity. That he should have paid off his brother’s debt at one stroke was to the young man a conceivable feat ”