Page:An introduction to physiological and systematical botany (1st edition).djvu/111

 Rh variety of the same Chrysanthemum has a totally different and much stronger odour.

There is, of course, still more analogy between the smell of plants in general and their impression on the palate, insomuch that we are frequently unable to discriminate between the two. The taste is commonly more permanent than the smell, but now and then less so. The root of the ''Arum maculatum, Engl. Bot. t.'' 1298, for instance, has, when fresh, a most acrid taste and irritating quality, totally lost by drying, when the root becomes simply farinaceous, tasteless and inert; so that well might learned physicians contrive the "Compound Powder of Arum," to excuse the continuance of its use in medicine, unless they had always prescribed the recent plant. Many curious remarks are to be found in Grew relative to the tastes of plants, and their different modes of affecting our organs. Anatomy of Plants, p. 279–292.

To all the foregoing secretions of vegetables may be added those on which their various colours depend. We can but imperfectly account for the green so universal in their