W '■ .'■•.•''-.'''' lira ■;■'■ ■■■..'.' HHRl •V Blossoming _ and stricken in days COMMON HEATH. (LING) \fl 0$ •v**1 ' PROSERPIN STUDIES OF WAYSIDE Lit'r „ LOWESRS^VRIO. WHILE THE AIR WAS YET PURE AMONG THE ALPS, AND IN THE SCOTLAND AND ENGLAND WHLCH MY FATHER KNEW. JOHN RUSKIN, LL.D., HONORARY STUDENT OF CHRIST CHURCH, AND SI.ADE PROFRSSOR OF FINE ART. " Oh — Proserpina ! For the flowers now, which frighted, thou let'st fall From Dis's waggon." VOLUME I. THIRD EDITION. GEORCxE ALLEN, ORPINGTON AND LONDON. 1897. All rights reserved ei k 81 CONTENTS OF VOL. I. l'ACE INTRODUCTION . I CHAPTER I. MOSS ......... 13 CHAPTER II. THE ROOT ........ 29 CHAPTER III. THE LEAF ........ 45 CHAPTER IV. THE FLOWER. 72 CHAPTER V. PAPAVER RHOEAS 97 CHAPTER VI. THE PARABLE OF JOASH Il8 CHAPTER VII. THE PARABLE OF JOTHAM 130 IV CONTENTS OF VOL. I. CHAPTER VIII. PAGE THE STEM . . . . . . ... 141 CHAPTER IX. OUTSIDE AND IN 170 CHAPTER X. THE BARK 1 89 CHAPTER XL GENEALOGY . . 195 CHAPTER XII. CORA AND KRONOS . . . . . .227 CHAPTER XIII. THE SEED AND HUSK 243 CHAPTER XIV. THE FRUIT GIFT 252 INDEX I. DESCRIPTIVE NOMENCLATURE 265 INDEX II. ENGLISH NAMES . . . . . . . 283 INDEX III. LATIN OR GREEK NAMES 286 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. VOL. I. Plate I. Common Heath (Ling) Line-Study I. Erica Tetralix Fig. i. Moss Leavi s . „ 2. Tuft of Moss Plate II. Common Bay-Laurel Fig. 3. Elm and Alisma Leaves ,, 4, 5. Poppy Petals . ,, 6. Trefoil, Quatrefoil, and Cinquefoil ,, 7. Four Stages in the Young Life of a Primrose .... „ 8. The Youth of a Pease-Blossom „ 9. The Progress of a Pease-Blossom ,, 10. Crosslet PoprY .... „ it. Crosslet Poppy in Profile „ 12. Crosslet Poppy in Petals Plate III. Acanthoid Leaves Frontispiece facing 11 on 15 »> 19 facing 45 on H 60 83 OIL . »» 84 OF A )> *» »» 90 91 92 102 103 )» i°5 facing 127 VI LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Plate IV. Crested Leaves Fig. 13. Outline of a Leaf of Burdock „ 14. Model of a Leaf of Burdock Plate V. Waste Thistle Fig. 15. The Tall Primula . Line-Study II., III., IV., V. . . . Fig. 16, 17. The Growth of Leaves . „ 18. The Ragged Robin . ,, 19. Leaves of the Monocot Plants „ 20. The Arethusan Leaf ,, 21, 22. Grass Construction . ,, 23. The Fleur-de-Lys Leaf . Plate VI. Iris Germanica „ VII. Purple Wreath-wort . „ VIII. Myrtilla Regina . faring 129 on 146 » > 147 facing 155 on «S9 facing 164 on 171 jj 173 173 175 on 176, 177 on 180 facing '83 » » 199 229 PROSERPINA. INTRODUCTION. Brantwood, \i,th March, 1874. YESTERDAY evening I was looking over the first book in which I studied Botany, — Curtis's Magazine, published in 1795 at No. 3, St. George's Crescent, Blackfriars Road, and sold by the principal booksellers in Great Britain and Ireland. Its plates are excellent, so that I am always glad to find in it the picture of a flower I know. And I came yesterday upon what I suppose to be a variety of a favourite flower of mine, called, in Curtis, "the St. Bruno's Lily." I am obliged to say " what I suppose to be a variety," because my pet lily is branched,* while this is drawn as unbranched, and especially stated to be so. And the page of text, in which this * At least, it throws off its flowers on each side in a bewilderingly pretty way ; a real lily can't branch, I believe : but, if not, what is the use of the botanical books saying "on an unbranched stem"? I 2 PROSERPINA. statement is made, is so characteristic of botanical books, and botanical science, not to say all science as hitherto taught for the blessing of mankind ; and of the difficulties thereby accompanying its communication, that I extract the page entire, printing it, opposite, as nearly as possible in facsimile. Now you observe, in this instructive page, that you have in the first place, eight names given you for one flower ; and that, among these eight names, you are not even at liberty to make your choice, because the united authority of Haller and Miller may be considered as an accurate balance to the single authority of Linnseus ; and you ought there- fore for the present to remain, yourself, balanced between the sides. You may be farther embarrassed by finding that the Anthericum of Savoy is only described as growing in Switzerland. And farther still, by finding that Mr. Miller describes two varieties of it, which differ only in size, while you are left to conjecture whether the one here figured is the larger or smaller ; and how great the difference is. Farther, If you wish to know anything of the habits of the plant, as well as its eight names, you are informed that it grows both at the bottoms of the mountains, and the tops ; and that, with us, it [ 3i8 ] Anthericum Liliastrum. Savoy Anthe- ricum, or St. Bruno's Lily. <*2 iti & j»i fi tti (♦? t-»3 ^ta ita ita Ja '♦? rawr by J.Ruskin. Engraved by G A]ler. II. Central Type of Leaves COMMON BAY.LAUREL 45 CHAPTER III. THE LEAF. i. T N the first of the poems of which the English A Government has appointed a portion to be sung every day for the instruction and pleasure of the people, there occurs this curious statement respecting any person who will behave himself rightly : "He shall be like a tree planted by the river side, that bears its fruit in its season. His leaf also shall not wither ; and you will see that whatever he does will prosper." I call it a curious statement, because the conduct to which this prosperity is promised is not that which the English, as a nation, at present think conducivc to prosperity : but whether the statement be true or not, it will be easy for you to recollect the two eastern figures under which the happiness of the man is represented, — that he is like a tree bearing fruit " in its season " ; (not so hastily as that the frost pinch it, nor so late that no sun ripens it ;) and that " his leaf shall not fade." I should like you to recollect this phrase in the 46 PROSERPINA. Vulgate — "folium ejus non defluet" — shall not fall away, — that is to say, shall not fall so as to leave any visible bareness in winter time, but only that others may come up in its place, and the tree be always green. 2. Now, you know, the fruit of the tree is either for the continuance of its race, or for the good, or harm, of other creatures. In no case is it a good to the tree itself. It is not indeed, properly, a part of the tree at all, any more than the egg is part of the bird, or the young of any creature part of the creature itself. But in the leaf is the strength of the tree itself. Nay, rightly speaking, the leaves are the tree itself. Its trunk sustains ; its fruit burdens and exhausts ; but in the leaf it breathes and lives. And thus also, in the eastern symbolism, the fruit is the labour of men for others ; but the leaf is their own life. " He shall bring forth fruit, in his time ; and his own joy and strength shall be continual." 3. Notice next the word 'folium.' In Greek, cpuMov, ' phyllon.' "The thing that is born," or "put forth." "When the branch is tender, and putteth forth her leaves, ye know that summer is nigh." The botanists say, "The leaf is an expansion of the bark of the stem." More accurately, the bark is III. THE LEAF. 47 a contraction of the tissue of the leaf. For every leaf is born out of the earth, and breathes out of the air; and there are many leaves that have no stems, but only roots. It is 'the springing thing'; this thin film of life ; rising, with its edge out of the ground — infinitely feeble, infinitely fair. With Folium, in Latin, is rightly associated the word Flos; for the flower is only a group of singularly happy leaves. From these two roots come foglio, feuille, feuillage, and fleur ; — blume, blossom, and bloom ; our foliage, and the borrowed foil, and the connected technical groups of words in archi- tecture and the sciences. 4. This thin film, I said. That is the essential character of a leaf; to be thin, — widely spread out in proportion to its mass. It is the opening of the substance of the earth to the air, which is the giver of life. The Greeks called it, therefore, not only the born or blooming thing, but the spread or expanded thing — " ttetmov." Pindar calls the beginnings of quarrel, " petals of quarrel." Recollect, therefore, this form, Petalos ; and connect it with Petasos, the expanded cap of Mercury. For one great use of both is to give shade. The root of all these words is said to be IIET (Pet), which may easily be remembered in Greek, as it some- times occurs in no unpleasant sense in English. 48 PROSERPINA. 5. But the word 'petalos' is connected in Greek with another word, meaning, to fly, — so that you may think of a bird as spreading its petals to the wind ; and with another, signifying Fate in its pursuing flight, the overtaking thing, or over- flying Fate. Finally, there is another Greek word meaning ' wide,' w?&tu; (platys) ; whence at last our ' plate ' — a thing made broad or extended — but especially made broad or ' flat ' out of the solid, as in a lump of clay extended on the wheel, or a lump of metal extended by the hammer. So the first we call Platter ; the second Plate, when of the precious metals. Then putting /; for /, and d for t, we get the blade of an oar, and blade of grass. * 6. Now gather a branch of laurel, and look at it carefully. You may read the history of the being of half the earth in one of those green oval leaves — the things that the sun and the rivers have made out of dry ground. Daphne — daughter of Enipeus, and beloved by the Sun, — that fable gives you at once the two great facts about vege- tation. Where warmth is, and moisture — there, also, the leaf. Where no warmth — there is no leaf ; where there is no dew — no leaf. 7. Look, then, to the branch you hold in your hand. That you can so hold it, or make a crown III. THE LEAF. 49 of it, if you choose, is the first thing I want you to note of it ; — the proportion of size, namely, between the leaf and you. Great part of your life and cha- racter, as a human creature, has depended on that. Suppose all leaves had been spacious, like some palm leaves ; solid, like cactus stem ; or that trees had grown, as they might of course just as easily have grown, like mushrooms, all one great cluster of leaf round one stalk. I do not say that they are divided into small leaves only for your delight, or your service, as if you were the monarch of everything — even in this atom of a globe. You are made of your proper size ; and the leaves of theirs : for reasons, and by laws, of which neither the leaves nor you know anything. Only note the harmony between both, and the joy we may have in this division and mystery of the frivolous and tremulous petals, which break the light and the breeze, — compared to what, with the frivolous and tremulous mind which is in us, we could have had out of domes, or penthouses, or walls of leaf. 8. Secondly ; think awhile of its dark clear green, and the good of it to you. Scientifically, you know green in leaves is owing to ' chlorophyll,' or, in English, to ' green-leaf.' It may be very fine to know that ; but my advice to you, on the whole, is to rest content with the general fact that leaves 50 PROSERPINA. are green when they do not grow in or near smoky towns; and not by any means to rest content with the fact that very soon there will not be a green leaf in England, but only greenish-black ones. And thereon resolve that you will yourself endeavour to promote the growing of the green wood, rather than of the black. 9. Looking at the back of your laurel-leaves, you see how the central rib or spine of each, and the lateral branchings, strengthen and carry it. I find much confused use, in botanical works, of the words Vein and Rib. For, indeed, there are veins in the ribs of leaves, as marrow in bones ; and the projecting bars often gradually depress them- selves into a transparent net of rivers. But the mechanical force of the framework in carrying the leaf-tissue is the point first to be noticed ; it is that which admits, regulates, or restrains the visible motions of the leaf; while the system of circula- tion can only be studied through the microscope. But the ribbed leaf bears itself to the wind, as the webbed foot of a bird does to the water, and needs the same kind, though not the same strength, of support ; and its ribs always are partly therefore constituted of strong woody substance, which is knit out of the tissue ; and you can extricate this skeleton framework, and keep it, after the leaf- tissue III. THE LEAF. 5 1 is dissolved. So I shall henceforward speak simply of the leaf and its ribs, — only specifying the addi- tional veined structure on necessary occasions. 10. I have just said that the ribs — and might have said, farther, the stalk that sustains them — are knit out of the tissue of the leaf. But what is the leaf-tissue itself knit out of? One would think that was nearly the first thing to be discovered, or at least to be thought of, concerning plants, — namely, how and of what they are made. We say they ' grow.' But you know that they can't grow out of nothing ; — this solid wood and rich tracery must be made out of some previously existing substance. What is the substance? — and how is it woven into leaves, — twisted into wood ? 11. Consider how fast this is done, in spring. You walk in February over a slippery field, where, through hoar-frost and mud, you perhaps hardly see the small green blades of trampled turf. In twelve weeks you wade through the same field up to your knees in fresh grass ; and in a week or two more, you mow two or three solid haystacks off it. In winter you walk by your currant-bush, or your vine. They are shrivelled sticks — like bits of black tea in the canister. You pass again in May, and the currant-bush looks like a young sycamore tree ; and the vine is a bower : and meanwhile the forests, 52 PROSERPINA. all over this side of the round world, have grown their foot or two in height, with new leaves — so much deeper, so much denser than they were. Where has it all come from ? Cut off the fresh shoots from a single branch of any tree in May. Weigh them ; and then consider that so much weight has been added to every such living branch, everywhere, this side the equator, within the last two months. What is all that made of? 12. Well, this much the botanists really know, and tell us, — It is made chiefly of the breath of animals : that is to say, of the substance which, during the past year, animals have breathed into the air ; and which, if they went on breathing, and their breath were not made into trees, would poison them, or rather suffocate them, as people are suffocated in uncleansed pits, and dogs in the Grotta del Cane. So that you may look upon the grass and forests of the earth as a kind of green hoar-frost, frozen upon it from our breath, as, on the window-panes, the white arborescence of ice. 13. But how is it made into wood? The substances that have been breathed into the air are charcoal, with oxygen and hydrogen, — or, more plainly, charcoal and water. Some neces- sary earth, — in smaller quantity, but absolutely essential, — the trees get from the ground ; but, I III. THE LEAF. 53 believe all the charcoal they want, and most of the water, from the air. Now the question is, where and how do they take it in, and digest it into wood? 14. You know, in spring, and partly through all the year, except in frost, a liquid called 'sap' circu- lates in trees, of which the nature, one should have thought, might have been ascertained by mankind in the six thousand years they have been cutting wood. Under the impression always that it had been ascertained, and that I could at any time know all about it, I have put off till to-day, 19th October, 1869, when I am past fifty, the knowing anything about it at all. But I will really endeavour now to ascertain something, and take to my botanical books, accordingly, in due order. (1) Dresser's "Rudiments of Botany." 'Sap' not in the index ; only Samara, and Sarcocarp, — about neither of which I feel the smallest curiosity. (2) Figuier's " Histoire des Plantes."* 'Seve,' not in index ; only Serpolet, and Sherardia arvensis, which also have no help in them for me. (3) Balfour's " Manual of Botany." ' Sap,' — yes, at last. " Article 257. Course of fluids in exogenous stems." I don't care about the course just now : I want to know where the fluids come from. " If a plant be * An excellent book, nevertheless. 54 PROSERPINA. plunged into a weak solution of acetate of lead," — I don't in the least want to know what happens. " From the minuteness of the tissue, it is not easy to determine the vessels through which the sap moves." Who said it was ? If it had been easy, I should have done it myself. " Changes take place in the composition of the sap in its upward course." I dare say ; but I don't know yet what its composition is before it begins going up. "The Elaborated Sap by Mr. Schultz has been called 'latex.'" I wish Mr. Schultz were in a hogshead of it, with the top on. "On account of these movements in the latex, the laticiferous vessels have been denominated cinenchymatous." I do not venture to print the expressions which I here mentally make use of. 15. Stay, — here, at last, in Article 264, is some- thing to the purpose : " It appears then that, in the case of Exogenous plants, the fluid matter in the soil, containing different substances in solution, is sucked up by the extremities of the roots." Yes, but how of the pine trees on yonder rock ? — Is there any sap in the rock, or water either ? The moisture must be seized during actual rain on the root, or stored up from the snow ; stored up, any way, in a tranquil, not actively sappy, state, till the time comes for its change, of which there is no account here. III. THE LEAF. 55 1 6. I have only one chance left now. Lindley's "Introduction to Botany." 'Sap,' — yes, — 'General motion of.' II. 325. "The course which is taken by the sap, after entering a plant, is the first subject for consideration." My dear Doctor, I have learned nearly whatever I know of plant structure from you, and am grateful ; and that it is little, is not your fault, but mine. But this — let me say it with all sin- cere respect — is not what you should have told me here. You know, far better than I, that ' sap ' never does enter a plant at all ; but only salt, or earth and water, and that the roots alone could not make it ; and that, therefore, the course of it must be, in great part, the result or process of the actual making. But I will read now, patiently; for I know you will tell me much that is worth hearing, though not perhaps what I want. Yes ; now that I have read Lindley's statement carefully, I find it is full of precious things ; and this is what, with thinking over it, I can gather for you. 17. First, towards the end of January, — as the light enlarges, and the trees revive from their rest, — there is a general liquefaction of the blood of St. Januarius in their stems ; and I suppose there is really a great deal of moisture rapidly absorbed from the earth in most cases ; and that this absorption is a great help 56 PROSERPINA. to the sun in drying the winter's damp out of it for us : then, with that strange vital power, — which scientific people are usually as afraid of naming as common people are afraid of naming Death, — the tree gives the gathered earth and water a changed existence ; and to this new-born liquid an upward motion from the earth, as our blood has from the heart; for the life of the tree is out of the earth ; and this upward motion has a mechanical power in pushing on the growth. "Forced onward by the current of sap, the plumule ascends," (Lindley, p. 132,) — this blood of the tree having to supply, exactly as our own blood has, not only the forming powers of substance, but a continual evapo- ration, "approximately seventeen times more than that of the human body," while the force of motion in the sap " is sometimes five times greater than that which impels the blood in the crural artery of the horse." 18. Hence generally, I think we may conclude thus much, — that at every pore of its surface, under ground and above, the plant in the spring absorbs moisture, which instantly disperses itself through its whole system " by means of some permeable quality of the membranes of the cellular tissue invisible to our eyes even by the most powerful glasses " (p. 326); that in this way subjected to the vital III. THE LEAF. 57 power of the tree, it becomes sap, properly so called, which passes downwards through this cellular tissue, slowly and secretly ; and then upwards, through the great vessels of the tree, violently, stretching out the supple twigs of it as you see a flaccid waterpipe swell and move when the cock is turned to fill it. And the tree becomes literally a fountain, of which the springing streamlets are clothed with new-woven garments of green tissue, and of which the silver spray stays in the sky, — a spray, now, of leaves. 19. That is the gist of the matter; and a very wonderful gist it is, to my mind. The secret and subtle descent— the violent and exulting resilience of the tree's blood, — what guides it ? — what compels ? The creature has no heart to beat like ours ; one cannot take refuge from the mystery in a ' muscular contraction.' Fountain without supply — playing by its own force, for ever rising and falling all through the days of Spring, spending itself at last in gathered clouds of leaves, and iris of blossom. Very wonderful ; and it seems, for the present, that we know nothing whatever about its causes ; — nay, the strangeness of the reversed arterial and vein motion, without a heart, does not seem to strike anybody. Perhaps, however, it may interest you, as I observe it does the botanists, to know that the cellular tissue through which the motion 58 PROSERPINA. effected is called Parenchym, and the woody tissue, Bothrenchym ; and that Parenchym is divided, by a system of nomenclature which " has some ad- vantages over that more commonly in use," * into merenchyma, conenchyma, ovenchyma, atracten- chyma, cylindrenchyma, colpenchyma, cladenchyma, and prismenchyma. 20. Take your laurel branch into your hand again. There are, as you must well know, innumerable shapes and orders of leaves ; — there are some like paws, and some like claws ; some like fingers, and some like feet ; there are endlessly cleft ones, and endlessly clustered ones, and inscrutable divisions within divisions of the fretted verdure ; and wrinkles, and ripples, and stitchings, and hemmings, and pinchings, and gatherings, and crumplings, and clippings, and what not. But there is nothing so constantly noble as the pure leaf of the laurel, bay, orange, and olive ; numerable, sequent, perfect in setting, divinely simple and serene. I shall call these noble leaves ' Apolline ' leaves. They cha- racterize many orders of plants, great and small, — from the magnolia to the myrtle, and exquisite ' myrtille ' of the hills (bilberry) ; but wherever you find them, strong, lustrous, dark green, simply * Lindley, ' Introduction to Botany, ' vol. i. , p. 2 1 . The terms ' ' wholly obsolete," says an authoritative botanical friend. Thank Heaven III. THE LEAF. 59 formed, richly scented or stored, — you have nearly always kindly and lovely vegetation, in healthy ground and air. 21. The gradual diminution in rank beneath the Apolline leaf, takes place in others by the loss of one or more of the qualities above named. The Apolline leaf, I said, is strong, lustrous, full in its green, rich in substance, simple in form. The inferior leaves are those which have lost strength, and become thin, like paper ; which have lost lustre, and become dead by roughness of surface, like the 'nettle, — (an Apolline leaf may become dead by bloom, like the olive, yet not lose beauty) ; which have lost colour, and become feeble in green, as in the poplar, or crudely bright, like rice ; which have lost substance and softness, and have nothing to give in scent or nourishment ; or become flinty or spiny ; finally, which have lost simplicity, and become cloven or jagged. Many of these losses are partly atoned for by gain of some peculiar loveliness. Grass and moss, and parsley and fern, have each their own delightfulness ; yet they are all of inferior power and honour, compared to the Apolline leaves. 22. You see, however, that though your laurel leaf has a central stem, and traces of ribs branch- ing from it, in a vertebrated manner, they are so 6o PROSERPINA. faint that we cannot take it for a type of verte- brate structure. But the two figures of elm and alisma leaf, given in " Modern Painters " (vol. iii.), and now here repeated, Fig. 3, will clearly enough show the opposition between this vertebrate form, branch- ing again usually at the edges, a, and the softly opening lines diffused at the stem, and gathered at the point of the leaf, b, which, as you almost a Fig. 3. without doubt know already, are characteristic of a vast group of plants, including especially all the lilies, grasses, and palms, which for the most part are the signs of local or temporary moisture in hot countries ; — local, as of fountains and streams ; temporary, as of rain or inundation. But temporary, still more definitely in the day, than in the year. When you go out, delighted, into III. THE LEAF. 6 1 the dew of the morning, have you ever considered why it is so rich upon the grass ; — why it is not upon the trees ? It is partly on the trees, but yet your memory of it will be always chiefly of its gleam upon the lawn. On many trees you will find there is none at all. I cannot follow out here the many inquiries connected with this subject, but, broadly, remember the branched trees are fed chiefly by rain, — the unbranched ones by dew, visible or invisible ; that is to say, at all events by moisture which they can gather for themselves out of the air ; or else by streams and springs. Hence the division of the verse of the song of Moses : " My doctrine shall drop as the rain ; my speech shall distil as the dew : as the small rain upon the tender Iierb, and as the showers upon the grass." 23. Next, examining the direction of the veins in the leaf of the alisma, b, Fig. 3, you see they all open widely, as soon as they can, towards the thick part of the leaf; and then taper, apparently with reluctance, pushing each other outwards, to the point. If the leaf were a lake of the same shape, and its stem the entering river, the lines of the currents passing through it would, I believe, be nearly the same as that of the veins in the aquatic leaf. I have not examined the fluid law accurately, and I do not suppose there is more real correspondence 62 PROSERPINA. than may be caused by the leaf's expanding in every permitted direction, as the water would, with all the speed it can ; but the resemblance is so close as to enable you to fasten the relation of the unbranched leaves to streams more distinctly in your mind, — just as the toss of the palm leaves from their stem may, I think, in their likeness to the springing of a fountain, remind you of their relation to the desert, and their necessity, therein, to life of man and beast. 24. And thus, associating these grass and lily leaves always with fountains, or with dew, I think we may get a pretty general name for them also. You know that Cora, our Madonna of the flowers, was lost in Sicilian Fields : you know, also, that the fairest of Greek fountains, lost in Greece, was thought to rise in a Sicilian islet ; and that the real springing of the noble fountain in that rock was one of the causes which determined the position of the greatest Greek city of Sicily. So I think, as we call the fairest branched leaves ' Apolline,' we will call the fairest flowing ones ' Arethusan.' But remember that the Apolline leaf represents only the central type of land leaves, and is, within certain limits, of a fixed form ; while the beautiful Arethusan leaves, alike in flowing of their lines, change their forms indefinitely, — some shaped like round pools, III. THE LEAF. 63 and some like winding currents, and many like arrows, and many like hearts, and otherwise varied and variable, as leaves ought to be, — that rise out of the waters, and float amidst the pausing of their foam. 25. Brantwood, Easter Day, 1875. — I don't like to spoil my pretty sentence, above ; but on reading it over, I suspect I wrote it confusing the water-lily leaf, and other floating ones of the same kind, with the Arethusan forms. But the water-lily and water- ranunculus leaves, and such others, are to the orders of earth-loving leaves what ducks and swans are to birds ; (the swan is the water-lily of birds ;) they are swimming leaves; not properly watery-creatures, or able to live under water like fish, (unless when dor- mant), but just like birds that pass their lives on the surface of the waves — though they must breathe in the air. And these natant leaves, as they lie on the water surface, do not want strong ribs to carry them,* but have very delicate ones beautifully branching into the orbed space, to keep the tissue nice and flat; while, on the other hand, leaves that really have to grow under water, sacrifice their tissue, and keep only their ribs, like coral animals ; (' Ranunculus heterophyllus,' 'other-leaved Frog-flower,' and its like,) just as, if " You should see the girders on under-side of the Victoria Water- lily, the most wonderful bit of engineering, of the kind, I know of."— ('Botanical friend.') 64 PROSERPINA. you keep your own hands too long in water, they shrivel at the finger-ends. 26. So that you must not attach any great botanical importance to the characters of contrasted aspects in leaves, which I wish you to express by the words ' Apolline ' and ' Arethusan ' ; but their mythic importance is very great, and your careful observance of it will help you completely to understand the beautiful Greek fable of Apollo and Daphne. There are indeed several Daphnes, and the first root of the name is far away in another field of thought altogether, connected with the Gods of Light. But etymology, the best of servants, is an unreasonable master ; and Professor Max Muller trusts his deep-reaching knowledge of the first ideas connected with the names of Athena and Daphne, too implicitly, when he supposes this idea to be retained in central Greek theology. Athena ' originally meant only the dawn, among nations who knew nothing of a Sacred Spirit. But the Athena who catches Achilles by the hair, and urges the spear of Diomed, has not, in the mind of Homer, the slightest remaining connection with the mere beauty of daybreak. Daphne chased by Apollo, may perhaps — though I doubt even this much of consistence in the earlier myth — have meant the Dawn pursued by the Sun. But there is III. THE LEAF. 65 no trace whatever of this first idea left in the fable of Arcadia and Thessaly. 27. The central Greek Daphne is the daughter of one of the great river gods of Arcadia ; her mother is the Earth. Now Arcadia is the Ober- land of Greece ; and the crests of Cyllene, Ery- manthus, and Maenalus* surround it, like the Swiss forest cantons, with walls of rock, and shadows of pine. And it divides itself, like the Oberland, into three regions : first, the region of rock and snow, sacred to Mercury and Apollo, in which Mercury's birth on Cyllene, his construction of the lyre, and his stealing the oxen of Apollo, are all expressions of the enchantments of cloud and sound, mingling with the sunshine, on the cliffs of Cyllene. " While the mists Flying, and rainy vapours, call out shapes And phantoms from the crags and solid earth As fast as a musician scatters sounds Out of his instrument." Then came the pine region, sacred especially to Pan and Maenalus, the son of Lycaon and brother of Callisto ; and you had better remember this relation- ship carefully, for the sake of the meaning of the constellations of Ursa Major and the Mons Maenalius, • Roughly, Cyllene 7,700 feet high ; Erymanthus 7,000 ; Maenalus 6,000. 66 PROSERPINA. and of their wolf and bear traditions ; (compare also the strong impression on the Greek mind of the wild leanness, nourished by snow, of the Boeotian Cithaeron, — "Oh, thou lake-hollow, full of divine leaves, and of wild creatures, nurse of the snow, darling of Diana," (Phcenissae, 80 1). How wild the climate of this pine region is, you may judge from the pieces in the note below* out of Colonel Leake's diary in • March yd. — We now ascend the roots of the mountain called Kastania, and begin to pass between it and the mountain of Alonis- tena, which is on our right. The latter is much higher than Kastania, and, like the other peaked summits of the Moenalian range, is covered with firs, and deeply at present with snow. The snow lies also in our pass. At a fountain in the road, the small village of Bazeniko is half a mile on the right, standing at the foot of the Msenalian range, and now covered with snow. Saeta is the most lofty of the range of mountains, which are in face of Levidhi, to the northward and eastward ; they are all a part of the chain which extends from Mount Khelmos, and connects that great summit with Artemisium, Parthenium, and Parnon. Mount Saeta is covered with firs. The mountain between the plain of Levidhi and Alonistena, or, to speak by the ancient nomenclature, that part of the Msenalian range which separates the Orchomenia from the valleys of Helisson and Methydrium, is clothed also with large forests of the same trees ; the road across this ridge from Levidhi to Alonistena is now impracticable on account of the snow. I am detained all day at Levidhi by a heavy fall of snow, which before the evening has covered the ground to half a foot in depth, although the village is not much elevated above the plain, nor in a more lofty situation than Tripolitza. March $lh. — Yesterday afternoon and during the night the snow fell in such quantities as to cover all the plains and adjacent mountains ; and the country exhibited this morning as fine a snow-scene as Norway could supply. As the day advanced and the sun appeared, the snow melted rapidly, but the sky was soon overcast again, and the snow began to fall. III. THE LEAF. 67 crossing the Maenalian range in spring. And then, lastly, you have the laurel and vine region, full of sweetness and Elysian beauty. 28. Now as Mercury is the ruling power of the hill enchantment, so Daphne of the leafy peace. She is, in her first life, the daughter of the mountain river, the mist of it filling the valley; the Sun, pursuing, and effacing it, from dell to dell, is, literally, Apollo pursuing Daphne, and adverse to her ; (not, as in the earlier tradition, the Sun pur- suing only his own light). Daphne, thus hunted, cries to her mother, the Earth, which opens, and receives her, causing the laurel to spring up in her stead. That is to say, wherever the rocks protect the mist from the sunbeam, and suffer it to water the earth, there the laurel and other richest vegeta- tion fill the hollows, giving a better glory to the sun itself. For sunshine, on the torrent spray, on the grass of its valley, and entangled among the laurel stems, or glancing from their leaves, became a thousandfold lovelier and more sacred than the same sunbeams, burning on the leafless mountain-side. And farther, the leaf, in its connection with the river, is typically expressive, not, as the flower was, of human fading and passing away, but of the per- petual flow and renewal of human mind and thought, rising " like the rivers that run among the hills " ; 68 PROSERPINA. therefore it was that the youth of Greece sacrificed their hair — the sign of their continually renewed strength, — to the rivers, and to Apollo. Therefore, to commemorate Apollo's own chief victory over death — over Python, the corrupter, — a laurel branch was gathered every ninth year in the vale of Tempe ; and the laurel leaf became the reward or crown of all beneficent and enduring work of man — work of inspiration, born of the strength of the earth, and of the dew of heaven, and which can never pass away. 29. You may doubt at first, even because of its grace, this meaning in the fable of Apollo and Daphne ; you will not doubt it, however, when you trace it back to its first eastern origin. When we speak carelessly of the traditions respecting the Garden of Eden, (or in Hebrew, remember, Garden of Delight,) we are apt to confuse Milton's descrip- tions with those in the book of Genesis. Milton fills his Paradise with flowers ; but no flowers are spoken of in Genesis. We may indeed conclude that in speaking of every herb of the field, flowers are included. But they are not named. The things that are named in the Garden of Delight are trees only. The words are, " every tree that was pleasant to the sight and good for food ; " and as if to mark III. THE LEAF. 69 the idea more strongly for us in the Septuagint, even the ordinary Greek word for tree is not used, but the word £v\ov, — literally, every 'wood,' every piece of timber that was pleasant or good. They are indeed the "vivi travi," — living rafters, — of Dante's Apennine. Do you remember how those trees were said to be watered ? Not by the four rivers only. The rivers could not supply the place of rain. No rivers do ; for in truth they are the refuse of rain. No storm-clouds were there, nor hidings of the blue by darkening veil ; but there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the face of the ground, — or, as in Septuagint and Vulgate, "There went forth a fountain from the earth, and gave the earth to drink." 30. And now, lastly, we continually think of that Garden of Delight, as if it existed, or could exist, no longer ; wholly forgetting that it is spoken of in Scripture as perpetually existent ; and some of its fairest trees as existent also, or only recently de- stroyed. When Ezekiel is describing to Pharaoh the greatness of the Assyrians, do you remember what image he gives of them ? " Behold, the Assyrian was a cedar in Lebanon, with fair branches ; and his top was among the thick boughs ; the waters nourished him, and the deep brought him up, with her rivers 70 PROSERPINA. running round about his plants. Under his branches did all the beasts of the field bring forth their young ; and under his shadow dwelt all great nations." 31. Now hear what follows. "The cedars in the Garden of God could not hide him. The fir trees were not like his boughs, and the chestnut trees were not like his branches : nor any tree in the Garden of God was like unto him in beauty." So that you see, whenever a nation rises into consistent, vital, and, through many generations, enduring power, tJtere is still the Garden of God ; still it is the water of life which feeds the roots of it ; and still the succession of its people is imaged by the perennial leafage of trees of Paradise. Could this be said of Assyria, and shall it not be said of England ? How much more, of lives such as ours should be, — just, laborious, united in aim, beneficent in fulfilment, — may the image be used of the leaves of the trees of Eden ! Other symbols have been given often to show the evanescence and slightness of our lives — the foam upon the water, the grass on the housetop, the vapour that vanishes away ; yet none of these are images of true human life. That life, when it is real, is not evanescent ; is not slight; does not vanish away. Every noble life leaves the fibre of it interwoven for ever in the work III. THE LEAF. 7 1 of the world ; by so much, evermore, the strength of the human race has gained ; more stubborn in the root, higher towards heaven in the branch ; and, " as a teil tree, and as an oak, — whose substance is in them when they cast their leaves, — so the holy seed is in the midst thereof." 32. Only remember on what conditions. In the great Psalm of life, we are told that everything that a man doeth shall prosper, so only that he delight in the law of his God, that he hath not walked in the counsel of the wicked, nor sat in the seat of the scornful. Is it among these leaves of the perpetual Spring, — helpful leaves for the healing of the nations, — that we mean to have our part and place, or rather among the " brown skeletons of leaves that lag, the forest brook along " ? For other leaves there are, and other streams that water them, — not water of life, but water of Acheron. Autumnal leaves there are that strew the brooks, in Vallom- brosa. Remember you how the name of the place was changed : " Once called ' Sweet water ' (Aqua bella), now, the Shadowy Vale." Portion in one or other name we must choose, all of us, — with the living olive, by the living fountains of waters, or with the wild fig trees, whose leafage of human soul is strewed along the brooks of death, in the eternal Vallombrosa. 72 CHAPTER IV. THE FLOWER. Rome, Whit Monday, 1874. 1. /^\N the quiet road leading from under the ^-J Palatine to the little church of St. Nereo and Achilleo, I met, yesterday morning, group after group of happy peasants heaped in pyramids on their triumphal carts, in Whit-Sunday dress, stout and clean, and gay in colour ; and the women all with bright artificial roses in their hair, set with true natural taste, and well becoming them. This power of arranging wreath or crown of flowers for the head, remains to the people from classic times. And the thing that struck me most in the look of it was not so much the cheerfulness, as the dignity ; — in a true sense, the becomingness and decorous- ness of the ornament. Among the ruins of the dead city, and the worse desolation of the work of its modern rebuilders, here was one element at least of honour, and order ; — and, in these, of delight. And these are the real significances of the flower itself. It is the utmost purification of the plant, and the utmost discipline. Where its tissue is blanched IV. THE FLOWER. -Ji fairest, dyed purest, set in strictest rank, appointed to most chosen office, there — and created by the fact of this purity and function— is the flower. 2. But created, observe, by the purity and order, more than by the function. The flower exists for its own sake,— not for the fruit's sake. The production of the fruit is an added honour to it — is a granted consolation to us for its death. But the flower is the end of the seed,— not the seed of the flower. You are fond of cherries, perhaps; and think that the use of cherry blossom is to produce cherries. Not at all. The use of cherries is to produce cherry blossom ; just as the use of bulbs is to produce hyacinths, — not of hyacinths to produce bulbs. Nay, that the flower can multiply by bulb, or root, or slip, as well as by seed, may show you at once how immaterial the seed-forming function is to the flower's existence. A flower is to the vegetable substance what a crystal is to the mineral. "Dust of sapphire," writes my friend Dr. John Brown to me, of the wood hyacinths of Scotland in the spring. Yes, that is so, — each bud more beautiful, itself, than perfectest jewel — this, indeed, jewel "of purest ray serene;" but, observe you, the glory is in the purity, the serenity, the radi- ance,— not in the mere continuance of the creature. 3. It is because of its beauty that its continuance 74 PROSERPINA. is worth Heaven's while. The glory of it is in being, — not in begetting ; and in the spirit and substance, — not the change. For the earth also has its flesh and spirit. Every day of spring is the earth's Whit Sunday — Fire Sunday. The falling fire of the rainbow, with the order of its zones, and the gladness of its covenant, — you may eat of it, like Esdras ; but you feed upon it only that you may see it. Do you think that flowers were born to nourish the blind ? Fasten well in your mind, then, the conception of order, and purity, as the essence of the flower's being, no less than of the crystal's. A ruby is not made bright to scatter round it child-rubies ; nor a flower, but in collateral and added honour, to give birth to other flowers. Two main facts, then, you have to study in every flower : the symmetry or order of it, and the perfection of its substance ; first, the manner in which the leaves are placed for beauty of form ; then the spinning and weaving and blanching of their tissue, for the reception of purest colour, or refining to richest surface. 4. First, the order : the proportion, and answering to each other, of the parts ; for the study of which it becomes necessary to know what its parts are; and that a flower consists essentially of Well, IV. THE FLOWER. 75 I really don't know what it consists essentially of. For some flowers have bracts, and stalks„ and toruses, and calices, and corollas, and discs, and stamens, and pistils, and ever so many odds and ends of things besides, of no use at all, seemingly; and others have no bracts, and no stalks, and no toruses, and no calices, and no corollas, and nothing recognizable for stamens or pistils, — only, when they come to be reduced to this kind of poverty, one doesn't call them flowers ; they get together in knots, and one calls them catkins, or the like, or forgets their existence altogether ; — I haven't the least idea, for instance, myself, what an oak blossom is like ; only I know its bracts get together and make a cup of them- selves afterwards, which the Italians call, as they do the dome of St. Peter's, ' cupola ' ; and that it is a great pity, for their own sake as well as the world's, that they were not content with their ilex cupolas, which were made to hold something, but took to building these big ones upside-down, which hold nothing — less than nothing, — large extinguishers of the flame of Catholic religion. And for farther embarrassment, a flower not only is without essen- tial consistence of a given number of parts, but it rarely consists, alone, of itself. One talks of a hyacinth as of a flower ; but a hyacinth is any j6 PROSERPINA. number of flowers. One does not talk of 'a heather'; when one says 'heath,' one means the whole plant, not the blossom, — because heath-bells, though they grow together for company's sake, do so in a voluntary sort of way, and are not fixed in their places ; and yet, they depend on each other for effect, as much as a bunch of grapes. 5. And this grouping of flowers, more or less waywardly, is the most subtle part of their order, and the most difficult to represent. Take that cluster of bog-heather bells, for instance, Line- study 1. You might think at first there were no lines in it worth study ; but look at it more carefully. There are twelve bells in the cluster. There may be fewer, or more ; but the bog-heath is apt to run into something near that number. They all grow together as close as they can, and on one side of the supporting branch only. The natural effect would be to bend the branch down ; but the branch won't have that, and so leans back to carry them. Now you see the use of drawing the profile in the middle figure : it shows you the exactly balanced setting of the group, — not droop- ing, nor erect ; but with a disposition to droop, tossed up by the leaning back of the stem. Then, growing as near as they can to each other, those in the middle get squeezed. Here is another quite IV. THE FLOWER. JJ special character. Some flowers don't like being squeezed at all (fancy a squeezed convolvulus !) ; but these heather bells like it, and look all the prettier for it, — not the squeezed ones exactly, by themselves, but the cluster altogether, by their patience. Then also the outside ones get pushed into a sort of star-shape, and in front show the colour of all their sides, and at the back the rich green cluster of sharp leaves that hold them ; all this order being as essential to the plant as any of the more formal structures of the bell itself. 6. But the bog-heath has usually only one cluster of flowers to arrange on each branch. Take a spray of ling (Frontispiece), and you will find that the richest piece of Gothic spire-sculpture would be dull and graceless beside the grouping of the floral masses in their various life. But it is difficult to give the accuracy of attention necessary to see their beauty without drawing them ; and still more difficult to draw them in any approximation to the truth before they change. This is indeed the fatallest obstacle to all good botanical work. Flowers, or leaves, — and especially the last, — can only be rightly drawn as they grow. And even then, in their loveliest spring action, they grow as you draw them, and will not stay quite the same creatures for half an hour. 78 PROSERPINA. 7. I said in my inaugural lectures at Oxford, § 107, that real botany is not so much the description of plants as their biography. Without ■entering at all into the history of its fruitage, the life and death of the blossom itself is always an eventful romance, which must be completely told, if well. The grouping given to the various states •of form between bud and flower is always the most important part of the design of the plant ; and in the modes of its death are some of the most touching lessons, or symbolisms, connected with its existence. The utter loss and far-scattered ruin of the cistus and wild rose, — the dishonoured and dark contortion of the convolvulus, — the pale wasting of the crimson heath of Apennine, are strangely opposed by the quiet closing of the brown bells of the ling, each making of themselves a little cross as they die ; and so enduring into the days of winter. I have drawn the faded beside the full branch, and know not which is the more beautiful. 8. This grouping, then, and way of treating each other in their gathered company, is the first and most subtle condition of form in flowers ; and, observe, I don't mean, just now, the appointed and disciplined grouping, but the wayward and accidental. Don't confuse the beautiful consent of IV. THE FLOWER. 79 the cluster in these sprays of heath with the legal strictness of a foxglove, — though that also has its divinity ; but of another kind. That legal order of blossoming — for which we may wisely keep the accepted name, ' inflorescence,' — is itself quite a separate subject of study, which we cannot take up until we know the still more strict laws which are set over the flower itself. 9. I have in my hand a small red poppy which I gathered on Whit Sunday on the palace of the Caesars. It is an intensely simple, intensely floral, flower. All silk and flame : a scarlet cup, perfect- edged all round, seen among the wild grass far away, like a burning coal fallen from Heaven's altars. You cannot have a more complete, a more stainless, type of flower absolute ; inside and out- side, all flower. No sparing of colour anywhere — no outside coarsenesses — no interior secrecies; open as the sunshine that creates it; fine-finished on both sides, down to the extremest point of insertion on its narrow stalk ; and robed in the purple of the Caesars. Literally so. That poppy scarlet, so far as it could be painted by mortal hand, for mortal King, stays yet, against the sun, and wind, and rain, on the walls of the house of Augustus, a hundred yards from the spot where I gathered the weed of its desolation. 80 PROSERPINA. 10. A pure cup, you remember it is ; that much at least you cannot but remember, of poppy- form among the cornfields ; and it is best, in beginning, to think of every flower as essentially a cup. There are flat ones, but you will find that most of these are really groups of flowers, not single blossoms ; and there are out-of-the-way and quaint ones, very difficult to define as of any shape ; but even these have a cup to begin with, deep down in them. You had better take the idea of a cup or vase, as the first, simplest, and most general form of true flower. The botanists call it a corolla, which means a garland, or a kind of crown ; and the word is a very good one, because it indicates that the flower- cup is made, as our clay cups are, on a potter's wheel ; that it is essentially a revolute form — a whirl or (botanically) ' whorl ' of leaves ; in reality successive round the base of the urn they form. ii. Perhaps, however, you think poppies in general are not much like cups. But the flower in my hand is a — poverty-stricken poppy, I was going to write, riov&rty-strengthened poppy, I mean. On richer ground, it would have gushed into flaunting breadth of untenable purple — flapped its inconsistent scarlet vaguely to the wind — dropped the pride of its petals over my hand in an hour after I gathered IV. THE FLOWER. 8 1 it. But this little rough-bred thing, a Campagna pony of a poppy, is as bright and strong to-day as yesterday. So that I can see exactly where the leaves join or lap over each other ; and when I look down into the cup, find it to be composed of four leaves altogether, — two smaller, set within two larger. 12. Thus far (and somewhat farther) I had written in Rome ; but now, putting my work together in Oxford, a sudden doubt troubles me, whether all poppies have two petals smaller than the other two. Whereupon I take down an excellent little school- book on botany — the best I've yet found, thinking to be told quickly; and I find a great deal about opium ; and, apropos of opium, that the juice of common celandine is of a bright orange colour ; and I pause for a bewildered five minutes, wondering if a celandine is a poppy, and how many petals it has : going on again — because I must, without making up my mind, on either question — I am told to " ob- serve the floral receptacle of the Californian genus Eschscholtzia." Now I can't observe anything of the sort, and I don't want to ; and I wish California and all that's in it were at the deepest bottom of the Pacific. Next I am told to compare the poppy and waterlily ; and I can't do that, neither — though I should like to ; and there's the end of the article ; 6 82 PROSERPINA. and it never tells me whether one pair of petals is always smaller than the other, or not. Only I see it says the corolla has four petals. Perhaps a celandine may be a double poppy, and have eight. I know they're tiresome irregular things, and I mustn't be stopped by them ;* — at any rate, my Roman poppy knew what it was about, and had its two couples of leaves in clear subordination, of which at the time I went on to inquire farther, as follows. 13. The next point is, what shape are the petals of? And that is easier asked than answered ; for when you pull them off, you find they won't lie flat, by any means, but are each of them cups, or rather shells, themselves; and that it requires as much conchology as would describe a cockle, before you can properly give account of a single poppy leaf. Or of a single any leaf — for all leaves are either shells, or boats, (or solid, if not hollow, masses,) and cannot be represented in flat outline. But, laying these as flat as they will lie on a sheet of paper, you will find the piece they hide of the paper they lie on can be drawn ; giving * Just in time, finding a heap of gold under an oak tree some thousand years old, near Arundel, I've made them out : Eight, divided by three ; that is to say, three couples of petals, with two odd little ones inserted for form's sake. No wonder I couldn't decipher them by memory. IV. THE FLOWER. 83 approximately the shape of the outer leaf as at A, that of the inner as at B, Fig. 4 ; which you will find very difficult lines to draw, for they are each composed of two curves, joined, as in Fig. 5 ; all above the line a b being the outer edge of the leaf, but joined so subtly to the side that the least break in drawing the line Fig. 4. spoils the form. 14. Now every flower petal consists essentially of these two parts, variously proportioned and outlined. 84 PROSERPINA. It expands from C to a b; and closes in the external line, and for this reason. Considering every flower under the type of a cup, the first part of the petal is that in which it expands from the bottom to the rim ; the second part, that in which it terminates itself on reaching the rim. Thus let the three circles, ABC, Fig. 6, represent ABC a b c Fig. 6. the undivided cups of the three great geometrical orders of flowers — trefoil, quatrefoil, and cinquefoil. Draw in the first an equilateral triangle, in the second a square, in the third a pentagon ; draw the dark lines from centres to angles ; (D E F) : then (a) the third part of D ; (b) the fourth part of E, (c) the fifth part of F, are the normal outline forms of the petals of the three families ; the relations IV. THE FLOWER. 85 between the developing angle and limiting curve being varied according to the depth of cup, and the degree of connection between the petals. Thus a rose folds them over one another, in the bud ; a convolvulus twists them, — the one expanding into a flat cinquefoil of separate petals, and the other into a deep-welled cinquefoil of connected ones. I find an excellent illustration in Veronica Polita, one of the most perfectly graceful of field plants because of the light alternate flower stalks, each with its leaf at the base ; the flower itself a quatre- foil, of which the largest and least petals are upper- most. Pull one off its calyx (draw, if you can, the outline of the striped blue upper petal with the jagged edge of pale gold below), and then examine the relative shapes of the lateral, and least upper petal. Their under surface is very curious, as if covered with white paint ; the blue stripes above, in the direction of their growth, deepening the more delicate colour with exquisite insistence. A lilac blossom will give you a pretty example of the expansion of the petals of a quatrefoil above the edge of the cup or tube ; but I must get back to our poppy at present. 15. What outline its petals really have, however, is little shown in their crumpled fluttering ; but that very crumpling arises from a fine floral cha- 86 PROSERPINA. racter which we do not enough value in them. We usually think of the poppy as a coarse flower ; but it is the most transparent and delicate of all the blossoms of the field. The rest — nearly all of them — depend on the texture of their surfaces for colour. But the poppy is painted glass ; it never glows so brightly as when the sun shines through it. Wherever it is seen — against the light or with the light— always, it is a flame, and warms the wind like a blown ruby. In these two qualities, the accurately balanced form, and the perfectly infused colour of the petals, you have, as I said, the central being of the flower. All the other parts of it are necessary, but we must follow them out in order. 16. Looking down into the cup, you see the green boss divided by a black star, — of six rays only, — and surrounded by a few black spots. My rough-nurtured poppy contents itself with these for its centre; a rich one would have had the green boss divided by a dozen of rays, and surrounded by a dark crowd of crested threads. This green boss is called by botanists the pistil, which word consists of the two first syllables of the Latin pistillum, otherwise more familiarly Eng- lished into ' pestle.' The meaning of the botanical word is of course, also, that the central part of a IV. THE FLOWER. 87 flower-cup has to it something of the relations that a pestle has to a mortar ! Practically, however, as this pestle has no pounding functions, I think the word is misleading as well as ungraceful; and that we may find a better one after looking a little closer into the matter. For this pestle is divided generally into three very distinct parts: there is a storehouse at the bottom of it for the seeds of the plant; above this, a shaft, often of considerable length in deep cups, rising to the level of their upper edge, or above it; and at the top of these shafts an expanded crest. This shaft the botanists call ' style,' from the Greek word for a pillar ; and the crest of it — I do not know why — stigma, from the Greek word for 'spot.' The storehouse for the seeds they call the 'ovary,' from the Latin ovum, an egg. So you have two-thirds of a Latin word, (pistil) — awkwardly and disagreeably edged in be- tween pestle and pistol — for the whole thing; you have an English-Latin word (ovary) for the bottom of it ; an English-Greek word (style) for the middle ; and a pure Greek word (stigma) for the top. 17. This is a great mess of language, and all the worse that the words style and stigma have both of them quite different senses in ordinary and scholarly English from this forced botanical one. And I will venture therefore, for my own pupils, to 88 PROSERPINA. put the four names altogether into English. Instead of calling the whole thing a pistil, I shall simply call it the pillar. Instead of 'ovary,' I shall say 'Treasury' (for a seed isn't an egg, but it is a treasure). The style I shall call the 'Shaft,' and the stigma the 'Volute.' So you will have your entire pillar divided into the treasury, at its base, the shaft, and the volute; and I think you will find these divisions easily remembered, and not unfitted to the sense of the words in their ordinary use. 1 8. Round this central, but, in the poppy, very stumpy, pillar, you find a cluster of dark threads, with dusty pendants or cups at their ends. For these the botanists' name 'stamens,' may be con- veniently retained, each consisting of a 'filament,' or thread, and an 'anther,' or blossoming part. And in this rich corolla, and pillar, or pillars, with their treasuries, and surrounding crowd of stamens, the essential flower consists. Fewer than these several parts, it cannot have, to be a flower at all ; of these, the corolla leads, and is the object of final purpose. The stamens and the treasuries are only there in order to produce future corollas, though often themselves decorative in the highest degree. These, I repeat, are all the essential parts of a flower. But it would have been difficult, with any other than the poppy, to have shown you them IV. THE FLOWER. 89 alone ; for nearly all other flowers keep with them, all their lives, their nurse or tutor ^leaves, — the group which, in stronger and humbler temper, protected them in their first weakness, and formed them to the first laws of their being. But the poppy casts these tutorial leaves away. It is the finished picture of impatient and luxury-loving youth,— at first too severely restrained, then casting all restraint away, — yet retaining to the end of life unseemly and illiberal signs of its once compelled submission to laws which were only pain, — not instruction. 19. Gather a green poppy bud, just when it shows the scarlet line at its side ; break it open and unpack the poppy. The whole flower is there complete in size and colour, — its stamens full- grown, but all packed so closely that the fine silk of the petals is crushed into a million of shapeless wrinkles. When the flower opens, it seems a deliver- ance from torture : the two imprisoning green leaves are shaken to the ground ; the aggrieved corolla smooths itself in the sun, and comforts itself as it can ; but remains visibly crushed and hurt to the end of its days. 20. Not so flowers of gracious breeding. Look at these four stages in the young life of a primrose, Fig. 7. First confined, as strictly as the poppy within five pinching green leaves, whose points 9° PROSERPINA. close over it, the little thing is content to remain a child, and finds its nursery large enough. The green leaves unclose their points, — the little yellow ones Fig. 7. peep out, like ducklings. They find the light deli- cious, and open wide to it ; and grow, and grow, and throw themselves wider at last into their perfect rose. But they never leave their old nursery for all that ; it and they live on together ; and the nursery seems a part of the flower. 21. Which is so, indeed, in all the loveliest flowers ; and, in usual botanical parlance, a flower is said to consist of its calyx, (or hiding part — Calypso having rule over it,) and corolla, or garland part, Proserpina having rule over it. But it is better to think of them always as IV. THE FLOWER. 9 1 separate ; for this calyx, very justly so named from its main function of concealing the flower, in its youth is usually green, not coloured, and shows its separate nature by pausing, or at least greatly lingering, in its growth, and modifying itself very slightly, while the corolla is forming itself through active change. Look at the two, for instance, through the youth of a pease blossom, Fig. 8. Fig. 8. The entire cluster at first appears pendent in this manner, the stalk bending round on purpose to put it into that position. On which all the little buds, thinking themselves ill-treated, determine not to submit to anything of the sort, turn their points upwards persistently, and determine that — at any cost of trouble — they will get nearer the sun. Then they begin to open, and let out their corollas. I give the progress of one only (Fig. 9).* It chances to be engraved the reverse way from the bud ; but that is of no consequence. At first, you see the long lower point of the * Figs. 8 and 9 are both drawn and engraved by Mr. Burgess. 92 PROSERPINA. *o^ calyx thought that it was going to be the head of the family, and curls upwards eagerly. Then the little corolla steals out ; and soon does away with that impression on the mind of the calyx. The corolla soars up with widening wings, the abashed calyx re- treats beneath ; and finally the great upper leaf of corolla — not pleased at having its back still turned to the light, and its face down — throws itself entirely back, to look at the sky, and nothing else; — and your blossom is complete. Keeping, therefore, the ideas of calyx and corolla entirely distinct, this one general point you may note of both : that, as a calyx is originally folded tight over the flower, and has to open deeply to let it out, it is nearly always composed of sharp pointed leaves like the segments of a balloon ; while corollas, having to open out as wide as possible to show themselves, are typically like cups or plates, Fig. 9. IV. THE FLOWER. 93 only cut into their edges here and there, for ornamentation's sake. 22. And, finally, though the corolla is essentially the floral group of leaves, and usually receives the glory of colour for itself only, this glory and delight may be given to any other part of the group ; and, as if to show us that there is no really dis- honoured or degraded membership, the stalks and leaves in some plants, near the blossom, flush in sympathy with it, and become themselves a part of the effectively visible flower; — Eryngo — Jura hyacinth, (comosus,) and the edges of upper stems and leaves in many plants ; while others, (Geranium lucidum,) are made to delight us with their leaves rather than their blossoms ; only I suppose, in these, the scarlet leaf colour is a kind of early autumnal glow, — a beautiful hectic, and foretaste, in sacred youth, of sacred death. I observe, among the speculations of modern science, several, lately, not uningenious, and highly industrious, on the subject of the relation of colour in flowers, to insects — to selective development, etc., etc. There are such relations, of course. So also, the blush of a girl, when she first perceives the faltering in her lover's step as he draws near, is related essentially to the existing state of her stomach ; and to the state of it through all the 94 PROSERPINA. years of her previous existence. Nevertheless, neither love, chastity, nor blushing, are merely ex- ponents of digestion. All these materialisms, in their unclean stupidity, are essentially the work of human bats ; men of semi-faculty or semi-education, who are more or less incapable of so much as seeing, much less thinking about, colour ; among whom, for one- sided intensity, even Mr. Darwin must be often ranked, as in his vespertilian treatise on the ocelli of the Argus pheasant, which he imagines to be artistically gradated, and perfectly imitative of a ball and socket. If I had him here in Oxford for a week, and could force him to try to copy a feather by Bewick, or to draw for himself a boy's thumbed marble, his notions of feathers, and balls, would be changed for all the rest of his life. But his ignorance of good art is no excuse for the acutely illogical simplicity of the rest of his talk of colour in the "Descent of Man." Peacocks' tails, he thinks, are the result of the admiration of blue tails in the minds of well-bred peahens, — and simi- larly, mandrills' noses the result of the admiration of blue noses in well-bred baboons. But it never occurs to him to ask why the admiration of blue noses is healthy in baboons, so that it develops their race properly, while similar maidenly admira- IV. THE FLOWER. 95 tion either of blue noses or red noses in men would be improper, and develop the race improperly. The word itself ' proper ' being one of which he has never asked, or guessed, the meaning. And when he imagined the gradation of the cloudings in feathers to represent successive generation, it never occurred to him to look at the much finer cloudy gradations in the clouds of dawn themselves ; and explain the modes of sexual preference and selec- tive development which had brought them to their scarlet glory, before the cock could crow thrice. Putting all these vespertilian speculations out of our way, the human facts concerning colour are briefly these. Wherever men are noble, they love bright colour ; and wherever they can live healthily, bright colour is given them — in sky, sea, flowers, and living creatures. On the other hand, wherever men are ignoble and sensual, they endure without pain, and at last even come to like, (especially if artists,) mud-colour and black, and to dislike rose-colour and white. And wherever it is unhealthy for them to live, the poisonousness of the place is marked by some ghastly colour in air, earth, or flowers. There are, of course, exceptions to all such widely founded laws ; there are poisonous berries of scarlet, and pestilent skies that are fair. But, if we once g6 PROSERPINA. honestly compare a venomous wood-fungus, rotting into black dissolution of dripped slime at its edges,, with a spring gentian ; or a puff adder with a salmon trout, or a fog in Bermondsey with a clear sky at Berne, we shall get hold of the entire question on its right side ; and be able afterwards to study at our leisure, or accept without doubt or trouble, facts of apparently contrary meaning. And the practical lesson which I wish to leave with the reader is, that lovely flowers, and green trees growing in the open air, are the proper guides of men to the places which their Maker intended them to inhabit ; while the flowerless and treeless deserts — of reed, or sand, or rock, — are meant to be either heroically invaded and redeemed, or sur- rendered to the wild creatures which are appointed for them ; happy and wonderful in their wild abodes. Nor is the world so small but that we may yet leave in it also unconquered spaces of beautiful solitude ; where the chamois and red deer may wander fearless, — nor any fire of avarice scorch from the Highlands of Alp, or Grampian, the rapture of the heath, and the rose. 97 CHAPTER V. PAPAVER RHOEAS. BRANTWOOD./tt/f llth, 1875. i. f~~* HANGING to take up yesterday a favourite ^"^ old book, Mavor's British Tourists, (London, 1798,) I found in its fourth volume a delightful diary of a journal made in 1782 through various parts of England, by Charles P. Moritz of Berlin. And in the fourteenth page of this diary I find the following passage, pleasantly complimentary to England : — " The slices of bread and butter which they give you with your tea are as thin as poppy leaves. But there is another kind of bread and butter usually eaten with tea, which is toasted by the fire, and is incomparably good. This is called ' toast.' " I wonder how many people, nowadays, whose bread and butter was cut too thin for them, would think of comparing the slices to poppy leaves ? But this was in the old days of travelling, when people did not whirl themselves past corn-fields, that they might have more time to walk on paving-stones ; 7 98 PROSERPINA. and understood that poppies did not mingle their scarlet among the gold, without some purpose of the poppy-Maker that they should be looked at. Nevertheless, with respect to the good and polite German's poetically-contemplated, and finely aesthetic, tea, may it not be asked whether poppy leaves themselves, like the bread and butter, are not, if we may venture an opinion — too thin, — \m-properly thin ? In the last chapter, my reader was, I hope, a little anxious to know what I meant by saying that modern philosophers did not know the meaning of the word ' proper,' and may wish to know what I mean by it myself. And this I think it needful to explain before going farther. 2. In our English prayer-book translation, the first verse of the ninety-third Psalm runs thus : " The Lord is King ; and hath put on glorious apparel." And although, in the future republican world, there are to be no lords, no kings, and no glorious apparel, it will be found convenient, for botanical purposes, to remember what such things once were ; for when I said of the poppy, in last chapter, that it was " robed in the purple of the Caesars," the words gave, to any one who had a clear idea of a Caesar, and of his dress, a better, and even stricter, account of the flower than if I had only said, with Mr. Sowerby, " petals bright scarlet ; " which might just as well V. PAPAVER RHOEAS. 99 have been said of a pimpernel, or scarlet geranium ; — but of neither of these latter should I have said " robed in purple of Caesars." What I meant was, first, that the poppy leaf looks dyed through and through, like glass, or Tyrian tissue ; and not merely painted : secondly, that the splendour of it is proud, — almost insolently so. Augustus, in his glory, might have been clothed like one of these ; and Saul ; but not David, nor Solomon ; still less the teacher of Solomon, when He puts on ' glorious apparel.' 3. Let us look, however, at the two translations of the same verse. In the Vulgate it is " Dominus regnavit ; decorem indutusest;" He has put on ' becomingness,' — decent apparel, rather than glorious. In the Septuagint it is evirptTraa — zvell-becommg- ness ; an expression which, if the reader considers, must imply certainly the existence of an opposite idea of possible 'z'//-becomingness,' — of an apparel which should, in just as accurate a sense, belong appropriately to the creature invested with it, and yet not be glorious, but inglorious, and not well- becoming, but ill-becoming. The mandrill's blue nose, for instance, already referred to, — can we rightly speak of this as ' evirpeireia ' ? Or the stings, and minute, colourless blossoming of the nettle ? 100 PROSERPINA. May we call these a glorious apparel, as we may the glowing of an alpine rose ■? You will find on reflection, and find more con- vincingly the more accurately you reflect, that there is an absolute sense attached to such words as ' de- cent,' ' honourable,' ' glorious,' or ' Kakos,' contrary to another absolute sense in the words ' indecent,' ' shameful,' ' vile,' or ' aio-^po?.' And that there is every degree of these absolute qualities visible in living creatures ; and that the divinity of the Mind of man is in its essential dis- cernment of what is koXov from what is alcr^pov, and in his preference of the kind of creatures which are decent, to those which are indecent ; and of the kinds of thoughts, in himself, which are noble, to those which are vile. 4. When therefore I said that Mr. Darwin, and his school,* had no conception of the real meaning of the word ' proper,' I meant that they conceived the qualities of things only as their ' properties,' but not as their ' becomingnesses ; ' and seeing that dirt is proper to a swine, malice to a monkey, poison to a nettle, and folly to a fool, they called a nettle but a nettle, and the faults of fools but folly ; and never saw the difference between ugliness and beauty * Of Vespertilian science generally, compare ' Eagle's Nest,' pp. 25. and 179 (of the " Revised Series," and pp. 28, 206-7 of tne small edition) V. PAPAVER RHOEAS. IOI absolute, decency and indecency absolute, glory or shame absolute, and folly or sense absolute. Whereas, the perception of beauty, and the power of defining physical character, are based on moral instinct, and on the power of defining animal or human character. Nor is it possible to say that one flower is more highly developed, or one animal of a higher order, than another, without the assumption of a divine law of perfection to which the one more conforms than the other. 5. Thus, for instance. That it should ever have been an open question with me whether a poppy had always two of its petals less than the other two, depended wholly on the hurry and imperfection with which the poppy carries out its plan. It never would have occurred to me to doubt whether an iris had three of its leaves smaller than the other three, be- cause an iris always completes itself to its own ideal. Nevertheless, on examining various poppies, as I walked, this summer, up and down the hills between Sheffield and Wakefield, I find the subordination of the upper and lower petals entirely necessary and normal ; and that the result of it is to give two distinct profiles to the poppy cup, the difference between which, however, we shall see better in the yellow Welsh poppy, at present called Meconopsis Cambrica, but which, in the Oxford schools, will be ' Papaver 102 PROSERPINA. cruciforme' — 'Crosslet Poppy,' — first, because all our botanical names must be in Latin if possible ; Fig. io. Greek only allowed when we can do no better ; V. PAPAVER RHOEAS. 103 secondly, because meconopsis is barbarous Greek ; thirdly, and chiefly, because it is little matter whether this poppy be Welsh or English ; but very needful that we should observe, wherever it grows, that the petals are arranged in what used to be, in my young days, called a diamond shape,* as at A,Fig. 1 o, the two narrow inner ones at right angles to, and projecting farther than, the two outside broad ones ; and that the two broad ones, when the flower is seen in profile, as at B, show their margins folded back, as indi- cated by the thicker lines, and have a pro- FlG. II. file curve, which is only the softening, or melting away into each other, of two straight lines. Indeed, when the flower is younger, and quite strong, both its profiles, A and B, Fig. II, are nearly straight-sided ; and * The mathematical term is ' rhomb.' 104 PROSERPINA. always, be it young or old, one broader than the other, so as to give the flower, seen from above, the shape of a contracted cross, or crosslet. 6. Now I find no notice of this flower in Gerarde ; and in Sowerby, out of eighteen lines of closely printed descriptive text, no notice of its crosslet form, while the petals are only stated to be " roundish- concave," terms equally applicable to at least one- half of all flower petals in the world. The leaves are said to be very deeply pinnately partite ; but drawn — as neither pinnate nor partite ! And this is your modern cheap science, in ten volumes. Now I haven't a quiet moment to spare for drawing this morning ; but I merely give the main relations of the petals, A, and blot in the wrinkles of one of the lower ones, B, Fig. 1 2 ; and yet in this rude sketch you will feel, I believe, there is something specific which could not belong to any other flower. But all proper description is impossible without careful profiles of each petal laterally and across it. Which I may not find time to draw for any poppy whatever, because they none of them have well-becomingness enough to make it worth my while, being all more or less weedy, and ungracious, and mingled of good and evil. Whereupon rises before me, ghostly and untenable, the general question, ' What is a weed ? ' and, V. PAPAVER RHOEAS. 105 impatient for answer, the particular question, ' What is a poppy ? ' I choose, for instance, to call this yellow flower a poppy, instead of a " likeness to poppy," which the botanists meant to call it, in their bad Greek. I choose also to call a poppy, what the botanists have called " glaucous thing," (glau- cium). But where and when shall I stop calling things poppies ? This is certainly a question to be settled at once, with others appertain- ing to it. 7. In the first place, then, I mean to call - every flower either one thing or another, and not an ' aceous ' thing, only half something or half another. I mean to call this plant now in my hand, either a poppy or not a poppy ; but not poppaceous. And this other, either a thistle or not a thistle ; but not thistlaceous. And this other, either a nettle or not a nettle ; but not nettlaceous. I know it will be B Fig. 12. 106 PROSERPISA. very difficult to carry out this principle when tribes of plants are much extended and varied in type : I shall persist in it, however, as far as pos- sible ; and when plants change so much that one cannot with any conscience call them by their family name any more, I shall put them aside somewhere among families of poor relations, not to be minded for the present, until we are well acquainted with the better bred circles. I don't know, for instance, whether I shall call the Burnet ' Grass- rose,' or put it out of court for having no petals ; but it certainly shall not be called rosaceous ; and my first point will be to make sure of my pupils having a clear idea of the central and unquestionable forms of thistle, grass, or rose, and assigning to them pure Latin, and pretty English, names, — classical, if possible ; and at least intelligible and decorous. 8. I return to our present special question, then, What is a poppy ? and return also to a book I gave away long ago, and have just begged back again, Dr. Lindley's ' Ladies' Botany.' For with- out at all looking upon ladies as inferior beings, I dimly hope that what Dr. Lindley considers likely to be intelligible to them, may be also clear to their very humble servant. The poppies, I find, (page 19, vol. i.) differ from crowfeet in being of a stupifying instead of a V. PAPAVER KHOEAS. IO7 burning nature, and in generally having two sepals and twice two petals ; " but as some poppies have three sepals, and twice three petals, the number of these parts is not sufficiently constant to form an essential mark." Yes, I know that, for I found a superb six-petaled poppy, spotted like a cistus, the other day in a friend's garden. But then, what makes it a poppy still ? That it is of a stupifying nature, and itself so stupid that it does not know how many petals it should have, is surely not enough distinction ? 9. Returning to Lindley, and working the matter farther out with his help, I think this definition might stand. " A poppy is a flower which has either four or six petals, and two or more treasuries, united into one ; containing a milky, stupifying fluid in its stalks and leaves, and always throwing away its calyx when it blossoms." And indeed, every flower which unites all these characters, we shall, in the Oxford schools, call ' P°PPy>' ar,d ' Papaver ; ' but when I get fairly into work, I hope to fix my definitions into more strict terms. For 1 wish all my pupils to form the habit of asking, of every plant, these following four questions, in order, corresponding to the subject of these opening chapters, namely, " What root has it ? what leaf ? what flower ? and what stem ? " And, I08 PROSERPINA. in this definition of poppies, nothing whatever is said about the root ; and not only I don't know myself what a poppy root is like, but in all Sowerby's poppy section, I find no word whatever about that matter. 10. Leaving, however, for the present, the root unthought of, and contenting myself with Dr. Lindley's characteristics, I shall place, at the head of the whole group, our common European wild poppy, Papaver Rhoeas, and, with this, arrange the nine following other flowers thus, — opposite. I must be content at present with determining the Latin names for the Oxford schools ; the English ones I shall give as they chance to occur to me, in Gerarde and the classical poets who wrote before the English revolution. When no satisfactory name is to be found, I must try to invent one ; as, for instance, just now, I don't like Gerarde's ' Corn-rose ' for Papaver Rhoeas, and must coin another ; but this can't be done by thinking ; it will come into my head some day, by chance. I might try at it straight- forwardly for a week together, and not do it. The Latin names must be fixed at once, some- how ; and therefore I do the best I can, keeping as much respect for the old nomenclature as possible, though this involves the illogical practice of giving the epithet sometimes from the flower, (violaceum, V. PAPAVER RHOEAS. IO9 g > rt 3 2 _u -*-» < H O 8 U) g 3 g 3 tn 3 'S? S g _3 'c H Z 0 0 U g 3 u "S 0 V 3 W tn u 2 c '53 4-* 4-t O O g .2 en 'en Oh u g g z > a 4-) u 0 g c < J3 X 'C g 0 O c 0 0 _3 "u 3 _3 '0 3 O "53 A Ph Ph Ph' Ph' Ph' Pi s 3 3 u tr! • • +- • • w c 5 0 (/> # c/> . . . . O O u •5. w a 2- d 0 c 3 "3i • • • • a • P» . . a. a. 3. 4 S. U 3 O O J < H < U t/5 Si g g a 'c 0 r2 0 3 0 R O Z u 0 A u > V tn e c 0 g 3 4-< c 0 g U 0 J U i ed 5 Ph P-. Ph Ph Ph Ph Ph Ph Ph Ph z " n ro ■* to VO t^ oo O O 60 Q JS -e- -3 110 PROSERPINA. cruciforme), and sometimes from the seed vessel, (elatum, echinosum, corniculatum). Guarding this distinction, however, we may perhaps be content to call the six last of the group, in English, Urchin Poppy, Violet Poppy, Crosslet Poppy, Horned Poppy, Beach Poppy, and Welcome Poppy. I don't think the last flower pretty enough to be connected more directly with the swallow, in its English name. ii. I shall be well content if my pupils know these ten poppies rightly ; all of them at present wild in our own country, and, I believe, also European in range : the head and type of all being the common wild poppy of our corn-fields for which the name ' Papaver Rhoeas,' given it by Dioscorides, Gerarde, and Linnzeus, is entirely autho- ritative, and we will therefore at once examine the meaning, and reason, of that name. 1 2. Dioscorides says the name belongs to it " Sia to ra^ecos to avdos a-rro^dXkeLv," "because it casts off its bloom quickly," from pea), (rheo) in the sense of shedding.* And this indeed it does, — first calyx, then corolla; — you may translate it 'swiftly ruinous ' poppy, but notice, in connection with this idea, how it droops its head before blooming ; an action which, It is also used sometimes of the garden poppy, says Dioscorides, " 5ia to peie ^f avrijs jiv iirbv" — "because the sap, opium, flows from it." V. PAPAVER RHOEAS. I I I I doubt not, mingled in Homer's thought with the image of its depression when filled by rain, in the passage of the Iliad, which, as I have relieved your memory of three unnecessary names of poppy families, you have memory to spare for learning. " (iiJkwv 8' w? erepuxre tcaprj ftakev, f/T evl k^ttco KapirS ftpiOofievr;, vorifjcn re eldpivycnv 0)9 €T€pcoa r)p,v\otdw vvv avre /j-iv uie? ' ' Ayaicov 'Ev 7ra\a/*j75 (fjopiovtri SiKacnroXoi, di re Oe/AiaTw; JTpo? J to? elpvaTaf" VIII. THE STEM. I 5 3 " Now, by this sacred sceptre hear me swear Which never more shall leaves or blossoms bear, Which, severed from the trunk, (as I from thee,) On the bare mountains left its parent tree ; This sceptre, formed by tempered steel to prove An ensign of the delegates of Jove, From whom the power of laws and justice springs (Tremendous oath, inviolate to Kings)." i 3. The supporting power in the tree itself is, I doubt not, greatly increased by this spiral action ; and the fine instinct of its being so, caused the twisted pillar to be used in the Lombardic Gothic, — at first, merely as a pleasant variety of form, but at last constructively and universally, by Giotto, and all the architects of his school. Not that the spiral form actually adds to the strength of a Lombardic pillar, by imitating contortions of wood, any more than the fluting of a Doric shaft adds to its strength by imitating the canaliculation of a reed ; but the perfect action of the imagination, which had adopted the encircling acanthus for the capital, adopted the twining stemma for the shaft ; the pure delight of the eye being the first condition in either case : and it is inconceivable how much of the pleasure taken both in ornament and in natural form is founded elementarily on groups 154 PROSERPINA. of spiral line. The study, in our fifth plate, of the involucre of the waste-thistle,* is as good an example as I can give of the more subtle and concealed conditions of this structure. 14. Returning to our present business of nomen- clature, we find the Greek word, ' stemma,' adopted by the Latins, becoming the expression of a growing and hereditary race ; and the branched tree, the natural type, among all nations, of multiplied families. Hence the entire fitness of the word for our present purposes ; as signifying, " a spiral shoot extending itself by branches." But since, unless it is spiral, it is not a stem, and unless it has branches, it is not a stem, we shall still want another word for the sustaining ' sceptre ' of a foxglove, or cowslip. Before determining that, however, we must see what need there may be of one familiar to our ears until lately, although now,. I understand, falling into disuse. * Carduus Arvensis. ' Creeping Thistle,' in Sowerby ; why, I cannot conceive, for there is no more creeping in it than in a furze- bush. But it especially haunts foul and neglected ground ; so I keep the Latin name, translating ' Waste-Thistle.' I could not show the variety of the curves of the involucre without enlarging ; and if, on this much increased scale, I had tried to draw the flower, it would have taken Mr. Allen and me a good month's more work. And I had no more a month than a life, to spare : so the action only of the spreading flower is indicated, but the involucre drawn with pre- cision. Drawn iy JRuskin Engraved by GJdlen Occult Spiral Action . WASTE - THISTLE. VIII. THE STEM. I 5 5 15. By our definition, a stem is a spirally bent, essentially living and growing, shoot of vegetation. But the branch of a tree, in which many such stems have their origin, is not, except in a very subtle and partial way, spiral ; nor except in the shoots that spring from it, progressive forwards ; it only receives increase of thickness at its sides. Much more, what used to be called the trunk of a tree, in which many branches are united, has ceased to be, except in mere tendency and temper, spiral ; and has so far ceased from growing as to be often in a state of decay in its interior, while the external layers are still in serviceable strength. 16. If, however, a trunk were only to be defined as an arrested stem, or a cluster of arrested stems, we might perhaps refuse, in scientific use, the popular word. But such a definition does not touch the main idea. Branches usually begin to assert themselves at a height above the ground approximately fixed for each species of tree, — low in an oak, high in a stone pine ; but, in both, marked as a point of structural change in the direction of growing force, like the spring of a vault from a pillar ; and as the tree grows old, some of its branches getting torn away by winds or falling under the weight of their own fruit, or load of snow, or by natural decay, there remains 156 PROSERPINA. literally a ' truncated ' mass of timber, still bearing irregular branches here and there, but inevitably suggestive of resemblance to a human body, after the loss of some of its limbs. And to prepare trees for their practical service, what age and storm only do partially, the first rough process of human art does com- pletely. The branches are lopped away, leaving literally the ' truncus ' as the part of the tree out of which log and rafter can be cut. And in many trees, it would appear to be the chief end of their being to produce this part of their body on a grand scale, and of noble substance ; so that, while in thinking of vegetable life without reference to its use to men or animals, we should rightly say that the essence of it was in leaf and flower — not in trunk or fruit ; yet for the sake of ariimals, we find that some plants, like the vine, are apparently meant chiefly to produce fruit ; others, like laurels, chiefly to produce leaves ; others chiefly to produce flowers ; and others to produce permanently serviceable and sculpturable wood ; or, in some cases, merely picturesque and monumental masses of vegetable rock, " inter- twisted fibres serpentine," — of far nobler and more pathetic use in their places, and their enduring age, than ever they could be for material purpose in VIII. THE STEM. I 57 human habitation. For this central mass of the vegetable organism, then, the English word ' trunk ' and French ' tronc ' are always in accurate scholarship to be retained — meaning the part of a tree which remains when its branches are lopped away. 17. We have now got distinct ideas of four different kinds of stem, and simple names for them in Latin and English, — Petiolus, Cymba, Stemma, and Truncus ; Stalk, Leaf-stalk, Stem, and Trunk ; and these are all that we shall commonly need. There is, however, one more that will be sometimes necessary, though it is ugly and difficult to pro- nounce, and must be as little used as we can. And here I must ask you to learn with me a little piece of Roman history. I say, to learn with me, because I don't know any Roman history except the two first books of Livy, and little bits here and there of the following six or seven. I only just know enough about it to be able to make out the bearings and meaning of any fact that I now learn. The greater number of modern historians know, (if honest enough even for that,) the facts, or something that may possibly be like the facts, but haven't the least notion of the mean- ing of them. So that, though I have to find out everything that I want in Smith's Dictionary, like any schoolboy, I can usually tell you the significance I 5 8 l'KOSERPINA. of what I so find, better than perhaps even Mr. Smith himself could. 1 8. In the 586th page of Mr. Smith's volume, you have it written that ' Calvus,' bald-head, was the name of a family of the Licinia gens ; that the man of whom we hear earliest, as so named, was the first plebeian elected to military tribuneship in B.C. 400 ; and that the fourth of whom we hear, was surnamed ' Stolo,' because he was so particular in pruning away the Stolons (stolones), or useless young shoots, of his vines. We must keep this word ' stolon,' therefore, for these young suckers springing from an old root. Its derivation is uncertain ; but the main idea meant by it is one of uselessness — sprouting with- out occasion or fruit ; and the words ' stolidus ' and ' stolid ' are really its derivatives, though we have lost their sense in English by partly confusing them with 'solid,' which they have nothing to do with. A ' stolid ' person is essentially a ' useless sucker ' of society ; frequently very leafy and graceful, but with no good in him. 19. Nevertheless, I won't allow our vegetable ' stolons ' to be despised. Some of quite the most beautiful forms of leafage belong to them ; — even the foliage of the olive itself is never seen to the same perfection on the upper branches as in VIII. THE STEM. I 59 the young ground-rods in which the dual groups of leaves crowd themselves in their haste into clusters of three. But, for our point of Latin history, remember always that in 400 B.C., just a year before the death of Socrates at Athens, this family of Stolid persons manifested themselves at Rome, shooting up from plebeian roots into places where they had no business ; and preparing the way for the degradation of the e ntire Roman race under the Empire ; their suc- cess being owed, remember also, to the faults of the patricians, for one of the laws passed by Calvus Stolo was that the Sibylline books should be in custody of ten men, of whom five should be plebeian, " that no falsifications might be introduced in favour of the patricians." 20. All this time, however, we have got no name for the prettiest of all stems, — that of annual flowers growing high from among their ground leaves, like lilies of the valley, and saxifrages, and the tall primulas — of which this pretty type, tlg' I5' Fig. 15, was cut for me by Mr. Burgess years 160 PROSERPINA. ago ; admirable in its light outline of the foamy globe of flowers, supported and balanced in the meadow breezes on that elastic rod of slenderest life. What shall we call it ? We had better rest from our study of terms a little, and do a piece of needful classifying, before we try to name it. 21. My younger readers will find it easy to learn, and convenient to remember, for a beginning of their science, the names of twelve great families of cinquefoiled flowers,* of which the first group of three, is for the most part golden, the second, blue, the third, purple, and the fourth, red. And their names, by simple lips, can be plea- santly said, or sung, in this order, the two first only being a little difficult to get over. I 2 3 4 Roof-foil, Lucy, Pea, Pink, Rock-foil, Blue-bell, Pansy, Peach Primrose. Bindweed. Daisy. Rose. Which even in their Latin magniloquence will not be too terrible, namely, — * The florets gathered in the daisy are cinquefoils, examined closely. No system founded on colour can be very general or un- exceptionable : but the splendid purples of the pansy, and thistle, which will be made one of the lower composite groups under Margarita, may justify the general assertion of this order's being purple. VIII. THE STEM. l6l 12 34 Stella, Lucia, Alata, Clarissa, Francesca, Campanula, Viola, Persica, Primula. Convoluta. Margarita. Rosa. 22. I do not care much to assert or debate my reasons for the changes of nomenclature made in this list. The most gratuitous is that of ' Lucy ' for « Gentian,' because the King of Macedon, from whom the flower has been so long named, was by no means a person deserving of so consecrated memory. I conceive no excuse needed for rejecting Caryophyll, one of the crudest and absurdest words ever coined by unscholarly men of science ; .or Papilionaceae, which is unendurably long for pease ; and when we are now writing Latin, in a sentimental temper, and wish to say that we gathered a daisy, we shall not any more be compelled to write that we gathered a ' Bellidem perennem,' or, an ' Oculum Diei.' I take the pure Latin form, Margarita, instead of Margareta, in memory of Margherita of Cortona* as well as of the great saint : also the tiny scat- terings and sparklings of the daisy on the turf may remind us of the old use of the word ' Margarita?,' for * See Miss Yonge's exhaustive account of the name, ' History of Christian Names.' vol. i., p. 265. I I 1 62 PROSERPINA. the minute particles of the Host sprinkled on the patina — " Has particulas ytxepiSas vocat Eucholo- gium, juapyaptras Liturgia Chrysostomi."* My young German readers will, I hope, call the flower Gretschen, — unless they would uproot the daisies of the Rhine, lest French girls should also count their love-lots by the Marguerite. I must be so ungracious to my fair young readers, however, as to warn them that this trial of their lovers is a ^ery favourable one, for, in nine blossoms out of ten, the leaves of the Marguerite are odd, so that, if they are only gracious enough to begin with the supposition that he loves them, they must needs end in the conviction of it. 23. I am concerned, however, for the present, only with my first or golden order, of which the Roof-foil, or house-leek, is called in present botany, Sedum, 'the squatter,' because of its way of fastening itself down on stones, or roof, as close as it can sit. But I think this an ungraceful notion of its behaviour ; and as its blossoms are, of all flowers, the most sharply and distinctly star- shaped, I shall call it ' Stella ' (providing otherwise, in due time, for the poor little chickweeds ;) and * (Du Cange.) The word ' Margarete ' is given as heraldic English for pearl, by Lady Juliana Berners, in the book of St. Albans. VIII. THE STEM. 1 63 the common stonecrop will therefore be ' Stella domestica.' The second tribe, (at present saxifraga,) growing for the most part wild on rocks, may, I trust, even in Protestant botany, be named Francesca, after St. Francis of Assisi ; not only for its modesty, and love of mountain ground, and poverty of colour and leaf; but also because the chief element of its decoration, seen close, will be found in its spots, or stigmata. In the nomenclature of the third order I make no change. 24. Now all this group of golden-blossoming plants agree in general character of having a rich cluster of radical leaves, from which they throw up a single stalk bearing clustered blossoms ; for which stalk, when entirely leafless, I intend always to keep the term ' virgula,' the ' little rod ' — not painfully caring about it, but being able thus to define it with precision, if required. And these are connected with the stems of branching shrubs through infinite varieties of structure, in which the first steps of transition are made by carrying the cluster of radical leaves up, and letting them expire gradually from the rising stem : the changes of form in the leaves as they rise higher from the ground being one of quite the most interesting specific studies in every 1 64 PROSERPINA. plant. I had set myself once, in a bye-study for foreground drawing, hard on this point ; and began, with Mr. Burgess, a complete analysis of the foliation of annual stems ; of which Line- studies II., III., and IV., are examples ; reduced copies, all, from the beautiful Flora Danica. But after giving two whole lovely long summer days, under the Giesbach, to the blue scabious, (' Devil's bit,') and getting in that time, only half-way up it, I gave in ; and must leave the work to happier and younger souls. 25. For these flowering stems, therefore, pos- sessing nearly all the complex organization of a tree, but not its permanence, we will keep the word ' virga ; ' and ' virgula ' for those that have no leaves. I believe, when we come to the study of leaf-order, it will be best to begin with these annual virgas, in which the leaf has nothing to do with preparation for a next year's branch. And now the remaining terms commonly applied to stems may be for the most part dispensed with ; but several are interesting, and must be examined before dismissal. 26. Indeed, in the first place, the word we have to use so often, ' stalk,' has not been got to the roots of, yet. It comes from the Greek crreXe^os, (stelechos,) the ' holding part ' of a tree, that which VIII. THE STEM. 165 is like a handle to all its branches ; ' stock ' is another form in which it has come down to us : with some notion of its being the mother of branches : thus, when Athena's olive was burnt by the Persians, two days after, a shoot a cubit long had sprung from the ' stelechos ' of it. 27. Secondly. Few words are more interesting to the modern scholarly and professorial mind than ' stipend.' (I have twice a year at present to consider whether I am worth mine, sent with compliments from the Curators of the University chest.) Now, this word comes from ' stips,' small pay, which itself comes from ' stipo,' to press together, with the idea of small coin heaped up in little towers or piles. But with the idea of lateral pressing together, instead of downward, we get ' stipes,' a solid log ; in Greek, with the same sense, oTU7ros, (stupos,) whence, gradually, with help from another word meaning to beat, (and a side-glance at beating of hemp,) we get our ' stupid,' the German stumph, the Scottish sumph, and the plain English ' stump.' Refining on the more delicate sound of stipes, the Latins got ' stipula,' the thin stem of straw : which rustles and ripples daintily in verse, associated with spica and spiculum, used of the sharp pointed ear of corn, and its fine processes of fairy shafts. 28. There are yet two more names of stalk to 1 66 PROSERPINA. be studied, though, except for particular plants, not needing to be used, — namely, the Latin cau-dex, and cau-lis, both connected with the Greek kguAos, properly meaning a solid stalk like a handle, passing into the sense of the hilt of a sword, or quill of a pen. Then, in Latin, caudex passes into the sense of log, and so, of cut plank or tablet of wood ; thus finally becoming the classical ' codex ' of writings engraved on such wooden tablets, and therefore generally used for authoritative manuscripts. Lastly, ' caulis,' retained accurately in our cauli- flower, contracted in ' colewort,' and refined in ' kail,' softens itself into the French ' chou,' meaning properly the whole family of thick-stalked eatable salads with spreading heads ; but these being distin- guished explicitly by Pliny as ' Capitati,' ' salads with a head,' or ' Captain salads,' the mediaeval French softened the ' caulis capitatus ' into ' chou cabus ; ' — or, to separate the round or apple- like mass of leaves from the flowery foam, ' cabus ' simply, by us at last enriched and emphasized into ' cabbage.' 29. I believe we have now got through the stiffest piece of etymology we shall have to master in the course of our botany ; but I am certain that young readers will find patient work, in this kind, well rewarded by the groups of connected thoughts VIII. THE STEM. 1 67 which will thus attach themselves to familiar names ; and their grasp of every language they learn must only be esteemed by them secure when they recog- nize its derivatives in these homely associations, and are as much at ease with the Latin or French syllables of a word as with the English ones ; this familiarity being above all things needful to cure our young students of their present ludicrous impression that what is simple, in English, is knowing, in Greek ; and that terms constructed out of a dead language will explain difficulties which remained insoluble in a living one. But Greek is not yet dead : while if we carry our unscholarly nomenclature much further, English soon will be ; and then doubtless botanical gentlemen at Athens will for some time think it fine to describe what we used to call caryophyllaceae, as the eSXij^iSes. 30. For indeed we are all of us yet but school- boys, clumsily using alike our lips and brains ; and with all our mastery of instruments and patience of attention, but few have reached, and those dimly, the first level of science, — wonder. For the first instinct of the stem, — unnamed by us yet — unthought of, — the instinct of seeking light, as of the root to seek darkness, — what words can enough speak the wonder of it ! Look. Here is the little thing, Line-study V. 1 68 PROSERPINA. (A), in its first birth to us : the stem of stems ; the one of which we pray that it may bear our daily bread. The seed has fallen in the ground with the springing germ of it downwards ; with heavenly cunning the taught stem curls round, and seeks the never-seen light. Veritable ' conversion,' miraculous, called of God. And here is the oat germ, (B) — after the wheat, most vital of divine gifts ; and assuredly, in days to come, fated to grow on many a naked rock in hitherto lifeless lands, over which the glancing sheaves of it will shake sweet treasure of innocent gold. And who shall tell us how they grow ; and the fashion of their rustling pillars — bent, and again erect, at every breeze. Fluted shaft or clustered pier, how poor of art, beside this grass-shaft — built, first to sustain the food of men, then to be strewn under their feet ! We must not stay to think of it, yet, or we shall get no farther till harvest has come and gone again. And having our names of stems now determined enough, we must in next chapter try a little to understand the different kinds of them. % B Line-Study II. Line-Study III. Line-Study IV. Line-Study V. ' Behold, a Sower went forth to sow.' VIII. THE STEM. 1 69 The following notes, among many kindly sent me on the subject of Scottish Heraldry, seem to be the most trustworthy : — "The earliest known mention of the thistle as the national badge of Scotland is in the inventory of the effects of James III. ; who probably adopted it as an appropriate illustration of the royal motto, In defence. "Thistles occur on the coins of James IV., Mary, James V., and James VI. ; and on those of James VI. they are for the first time accompanied by the motto, Nemo me impune lacesset. " A collar of thistles appears on the gold bonnet-pieces of James V. of 1539; and the royal ensigns, as depicted in Sir David Lindsay's armorial register of 1542, are surrounded by a collar formed entirely of golden thistles, with an oval badge attached. "This collar, however, was a mere device until the institution, or, as it is generally but inaccurately called, the revival, of the order of the Thistle by James VII. (II. of England), which took place on May 29, 1687." Date of James III.'s reign 1460 — -1488. 170 CHAPTER IX. OUTSIDE AND IN. i. ' I "HE elementary study of methods of growth, given in the following chapter, has been many years written, (the greater part soon after the fourth volume of ' Modern Painters ') ; and ought now to be rewritten entirely ; but having no time to do this, I leave it with only a word or two of modification, because some truth and clearness of incipient notion will be conveyed by it to young readers, from which I can afterwards lop the errors, and into which I can graft the finer facts, better than if I had a less blunt embryo to begin with. 2. A stem, then, broadly speaking, (I had thus began the old chapter,) is the channel of com- munication between the leaf and root ; and if the leaf can grow directly from the root, there is no stem : so that it is well first to conceive of all plants as consisting of leaves and roots only, with the condition that each leaf must have its own IX. OUTSIDE AND IX. 171 Fig. 16. quite particular root * somewhere. Let a b c, Fig. 16, be three leaves, each, as you see, with its own root, and by no means de- pendent on other leaves for its daily bread ; and let the horizontal line be the surface of the ground. Then the plant has no stem, or an underground one. But if the three leaves rise above the ground, as in Fig. 1 7, they must reach their roots by elongating their stalks, and this elongation is the stem of the plant. If the outside leaves grow last and are therefore youngest, the plant is said to grow from the outside. You know that ' ex ' means out, and that ' gen ' is the first syllable of Genesis (or creation), therefore the old botanists, putting an o between the two syllables, called plants whose outside leaves grew last, Ex-o-gens. If the inside leaf grows last, and is youngest, the plant was said to grow from the inside, and from the Greek Endon, within, called an ' Endo-gen.' If Fig. 17. * Kecent botanical research makes this statement more than dubitable. Xevertheless, on no other supposition can the forms and action of tree-branches, so far as at present known to me, be yet clearly accounted for. 172 PROSERPINA. these names are persisted in, the Greek botanists, to return the compliment, will of course call Endogens 'IvcreiS/Jopi'iSes, and Exogens "OirrcreiS- jSopviSes- In the Oxford school, they will be called simply Inlaid and Outlaid. 3. You see that if the outside leaves are to grow last, they may conveniently grow two at a time ; which they accordingly do, and exogens always start with two little leaves from their roots, and may therefore conveniently be called two-leaved ; which, if you please, we will for our parts call them. The botanists call them ' two-suckered,' and can't be content to call them that in English ; but drag in a long Greek word, meaning the fleshy sucker of the sea-devil, — ' cotyledon,' which, however, I find is practically getting shortened into ' cot,' and that they will have to end by calling endogens, mono- cots, and exogens, bicots. I mean steadily to call them one-leaved and two-leaved, for this further reason, that they differ not merely in the single or dual springing of first leaves from the seed ; but in the distinctly single or dual arrangement of leaves afterwards on the stem ; so that, through all the complexity obtained by alternate and spiral placing, every bicot or two-leaved flower or tree is in reality composed of dual groups of leaves, separated by a given length of stem ; as, most characteristically in IX. OUTSIDE AND IN. 1 73 this pure mountain type of the Ragged Robin (Clarissa laciniosa), Fig. 1 8 ; and compare A, and B, Line-study II. ; while, on the other hand, the monocot plants are by close analysfc, I think, always resolvable into successively climbing leaves, sessile on one another, and sending their roots, or processes, for nourishment, down through one another, as in Fig. 19. 4. Not that I am yet clear, at all, myself; but I do think it's more the botanists' fault than mine, what ' coty- ledonous' structure there may be at the outer base of each successive bud ; and still less, how the intervenient length of stem, in the bicots, is related to their power, or law, of branching. For not only the two-leaved tree is outlaid, and the one-leaved inlaid, but the two-leaved tree is branched, and the one-leaved tree is not branched. This is a most vital and important distinction, which I state to you in very bold terms, for Fig. 18. - Fig. 19. 1 74 PROSERPINA. though there are some apparent exceptions to the law, there are, I believe, no real ones, if we define a branch rightly. Thus, the head of a palm tree is merely a cluster of large leaves ; and the spike of a grass, a clustered blossom. The stem, in both, is unbranched ; and we should be able in this respect to classify plants very simply indeed, but for a provoking species of intermediate creatures whose branching is always in the manner of corals, or sponges, or aborescent minerals, irregular and accidental, and essenti- ally, therefore, distinguished from the systematic anatomy of a truly branched tree. Of these presently ; we must go on by very short steps : and I find no step can be taken without check from existing generalizations. Sowerby's defini- tion of Monocotyledons, in his ninth volume, begins thus : " Herbs, (or rarely, and only in exotic genera,) trees, in which the wood, pith, and bark are indistinguishable." Now if there be one plant more than another in which the pith is defined, it is the common Rush ; while the nobler families of true herbs derive their principal character from being pithless altogether ! We cannot advance too slowly. 5. In the families of one-leaved plants in which the young leaves grow directly out of the old ones, IX. OUTSIDE AND IN. '75 it becomes a grave question for them whether the old ones are to lie flat or edgeways, and whether they must therefore grow out of their faces or their edges. And we must at once understand the way they contrive it, in either case. Among the many forms taken by the Arethusan leaf, one of the commonest is long and gradually tapering, — much broader at the base than the point. We will take such an one for examination, and suppose that it is growing on the ground as in Fig. 20, with a root to its every fibre. Cut out a piece of strong paper roughly into the shape of this Arethusan leaf, a, Fig. 21. Now suppose the next young leaf has to spring out of the front of this one, at about the middle of its height. Give it two nicks with the scissors at b b ; then roll up the lower part into a cylinder, (it will overlap a good deal at the bottom,) and tie it fast with a fine thread : so, you will get the form at c. Then bend the top of it back, so that, seen sideways, it appears as at d, and you see you have made quite a little flower-pot to plant your new leaf in, and perhaps it may occur to you that you have seen Fig. 20. 176 TROSERPINA. something like this before. Now make another, a little less wide, but with the part for the cylinder twice as long, roll it up in the same way, and slip it inside the other, with the flat part turned the other way, e. Surely this reminds you now of something you have seen ? Or must I draw the something (Fig. 22) ? 6. All grasses are thus constructed, and have their leaves set thus, opposite, on the sides of their tubular stems, alternately, as they ascend. But in most of them there is also a peculiar construction, by which, at the base of the sheath, or enclosing IX. OUTSIDE AND IN. 77 tube, each leaf articulates itself with the rest of the stem at a ringed knot, or joint. Before examining these, remember there are mainly two sorts of joints in the frame- work of the bodies of animals. One is that in which the bone is thick at the joints and thin between them, (see the bone of the next chicken leg you eat,) the other is that of animals that have shells or horny coats, in which characteristically the shell is thin at the joints, and thick between them (look at the next lobster's claw you can see, with- out eating). You know, also, that though the crustaceous are titled only from their crusts, the name ' insect ' is given to the whole insect tribe, because they are farther jointed almost into sections ; it is easily remembered, also, that the projecting joint means strength and elasticity in the creature, and that all its limbs are useful to it, and cannot conveniently be parted with ; and FlG- 22- that the incised, sectional, or insectile joint means more or less weakness,* and necklace-like laxity or license in the creature's make ; and an ignoble power * Not always in muscular power ; but the framework on which strong muscles are to act, as that of an insect's wing, or its jaw, is never insectile. 12 178 PROSERPINA. of shaking off its legs or arms on occasion, coupled also with modes of growth involving occasionally quite astonishing transformations, and beginnings of new life under new circumstances ; so that, until very lately, no mortal knew what a crab was like in its youth, the very existence of the creature, as well as its legs, being jointed, as it were, and made in separate pieces with the narrowest possible thread of connection between them ; and its principal, or stomachic, period of life, connected with its sentimental period by as thin a thread as a wasp's stomach is with its thorax. 7. Now in plants, as in animals, there are just the same opposed aspects of joint, with this specialty of difference in function, that the animal's limb bends at the joints, but the vegetable limb stiffens. And when the articulation projects, as in the joint of a cane, it means not only that the strength of the plant is well carried through the junction, but is carried farther and more safely than it could be without it : a cane is stronger, and can stand higher that it could otherwise, because of its joints. Also, this structure implies that the plant has a will of its own, and a position which on the whole it will keep, however it may now and then be bent out of it ; and that it has a continual battle, of a healthy and human- like kind, to wage with surrounding elements. But the crabby, or insect-like, joint, which you get IX. OUTSIDE AND IN. 1 79 in seaweeds and cacti, means either that the plant is to be dragged and wagged here and there at the will of waves, and to have no spring nor mind of its own ; or else that it has at least no springy in- tention and elasticity of purpose, but only a knobby, knotty, prickly, malignant stubbornness, and inco- herent opiniativeness ; crawling about, and coggling, and grovelling, and aggregating anyhow, like the minds of so many people whom one knows ! 8. Returning then to our grasses, in which the real rooting and junction of the leaves with each other is at these joints ; we find that therefore every leaf of grass may be thought of as consisting of two main parts, for which we shall want two separate names. The lowest part, which wraps itself round to become strong, we will call the ' staff/ and for the free-floating outer part we will take specially the name given at present carelessly to a large number of the plants themselves, ' flag.' This will give a more clear meaning to the words ' rod ' (virga), and 'staff' (baculus), when they occur together, as in the 23 rd Psalm ; and remember the distinction is that a rod bends like a switch, but a staff is stiff. I keep the well-known name ' blade' for grass-leaves in their fresh green state. 9. You felt, as you were bending down the paper into the form d, Fig. 21, the difficulty and ISO PROSERPINA. awkwardness of the transition from the tubular form of the staff to the flat one of the flag. The mode in which this change is effected is one of the most inte- resting features in plants, for you will find presently that the leaf-stalk in ordinary leaves is only a means of accomplishing the same change from round to flat. But you know I said just now that some leaves were not flat, but set upright, edgeways. It is not a common position in two-leaved trees ; but if you can run out and look at an arbor vitse, it may interest you to see its hatchet-shaped vertically c crested cluster of leaves trans- forming themselves gradually downwards into branches ; and in one-leaved trees the verti- cally edged group is of great importance. 10. Cut out another piece of paper like a in Fig. 21, but now, instead of merely giving it nicks at a, b, cut it into the shape A, Fig. 23. Roll the lower part up as before, but instead of pulling the upper part down, pinch its back at the dotted line, and bring the two points, a and b, forward, so that they may touch each other. B shows the look of the Fig. 23. IX. OUTSIDE AND IN. l8l thing half-done, before the points a and b have quite met. Pinch them close, and stitch the two edges neatly together, all the way from a to the point c ; then roll and tie up the lower part as before. You will find then that the back or spinal line of the whole leaf is bent forward, as at B. Now go out to the garden and gather the green leaf of a fleur-de-lys, and look at it and your piece of disciplined paper together ; and I fancy you will probably find out several things for yourself that I want you to know. 1 1. You see, for one thing, at once, how strong the fleur-de-lys leaf is, and that it is just twice as strong as a blade of grass, for it is the substance of the staff, with its sides flattened together, while the grass blade is a staff cut open and flattened out. And you see that as a grass blade necessarily flaps down, the fleur-de-lys leaf as necessarily curves up, owing to that inevitable bend in its back. And you see, with its keen edge, and long curve, and sharp point, how like a sword it is. The botanists would for once have given a really good and right name to the plants which have this kind of leaf, ' Ensatae,' from the Latin ' ensis,' a sword ; if only sata had been properly formed from sis. We can't let the rude Latin stand, but you may remember that the fleur-de-lys, which is the flower of chivalry, has a sword for its leaf, and a lily for its heart. 1 82 PROSERPINA. 12. In case you cannot gather a fleur-de-lys leaf, I have drawn for you, in Plate VI., a cluster of such leaves, which are as pretty as any, and so small that, missing the points of a few, I can draw them of their actual size. You see the pretty alternate interlacing at the bottom, and if you can draw at all, and will try to outline their curves, you will find what subtle lines they are. I did not know this name for the strong-edged grass leaves when I wrote the pieces about shield and sword leaves in ' Modern Painters ' ; I wish I had chanced in those passages on some other similitude, but I can't alter them now, and my trustful pupils may avoid all confusion of thought by putting gladius for ensis, and translating it by the word ' scymitar,' which is also more accurate in expressing the curva- ture blade. So we will call the ensatse, instead, ' gladiolae,' translating, ' scymitar-grasses.' And having now got at some clear idea of the dis- tinction between outlaid and inlaid growth in the stem, the reader will find the elementary analysis of forms resulting from outlaid growth in ' Modern Painters ' ; and I mean to republish it in the sequel of this book, but must go on to other matters here. The growth of the inlaid stem we will follow as far as we need, for English plants, in examining the grasses. Drawn ly J Ruskm Kngraved to G Alle VI Radical Insertion of leaves of Ensatae IRIS GERMANICA. IX. OUTSIDE AND IN. I 83 Florence, iili September, 1874. As I correct this chapter for press, I find it is too imperfect to be let go without a word or two more. In the first place, I have not enough, in distin- guishing the nature of the living yearly shoot, with its cluster of fresh leafage, from that of the accumu- lated mass of perennial trees, taken notice of the similar power even of the annual shoot, to obtain some manner of immortality for itself, or at least of usefulness, after death. A Tuscan woman stopped me on the path up to Fiesole last night, to beg me to buy her plaited straw. I wonder how long straw lasts, if one takes care of it ? A Leghorn bonnet, (if now such things are,) carefully put away, — even properly taken care of when it is worn, — how long will it last, young ladies? I have just been reading the fifth chapter of II. Esdras, and am fain to say, with less discom- fort than otherwise I might have felt, (the example being set me by the archangel Uriel,) " I am not sent to tell thee, for I do not know." How old is the oldest straw known ? the oldest linen ? the oldest hemp ? We have mummy wheat, — cloth of papyrus, which is a kind of straw. The paper reeds by the brooks, the flax-flower in the field, leave such imperishable frame behind them. And Ponte-della-Paglia, in Venice ; and Straw Street, of 1 84 PROSERPINA. Paris, remembered in Heaven, — there is no occasion to change their names, as one may have to change ' Waterloo Bridge,' or the ' Rue de l'lmperatrice.' Poor Empress ! Had she but known that her true dominion was in the straw streets of her fields ; not in the stone streets of her cities ! But think how wonderful this imperishableness of the stem of many plants is, even in their annual work : how much more in their perennial work ! The noble stability between death and life, of a piece of perfect wood ? It cannot grow, but will not decay ; keeps record of its years of life, but surrenders them to become a constantly serviceable thing : which may be sailed in, on the sea, built with, on the land, carved by Donatello, painted on by Fra Angelico. And it is not the wood's fault, but the fault of Florence in not taking proper care of it, that the panel of Sandro Botticelli's loveliest picture has cracked, (not with heat, I believe, but blighting frost,) a quarter of an inch wide through the Madonna's face. But what is this strange state of undecaying wood ? What sort of latent life has it, which it only finally parts with when it rots ? Nay, what is the law by which its natural life is measured ? What makes a tree ' old ' ? One sees the Spanish-chestnut trunks among the Apennines IX. OUTSIDE AND IN. 185 growing into caves, instead of logs. Vast hollows, confused among the recessed darknesses of the marble crags, surrounded by mere laths of living stem, each with its coronal of glorious green leaves. Why can't the tree go on, and on, — hollowing itself into a Fairy — no — a Dryad, Ring, — till it becomes a perfect Stonehenge of a tree ? Truly, " I am not sent to tell thee, for I do not know." The worst of it is, however, that I don't know one thing which I ought very thoroughly to have known at least thirty years ago, namely, the true difference in the way of building the trunk in out- laid and inlaid wood. I have an idea that the stem of a palm-tree is only a heap of leaf-roots built up like a tower of bricks, year by year, and that the palm-tree really grows on the top of it, like a bunch of fern ; but I've no books here, and no time to read them if I had. If only I were a strong giant, instead of a thin old gentleman of fifty-five, how I should like to pull up one of those little palm-trees by the roots — (by the way, ■what are the roots of a palm like ? and, how does it stand in sand, where it is wanted to stand, mostly ? Fancy, not knowing that, at fifty-five !) — that grow all along the Riviera ; and snap its stem in two, and cut it down the middle. But I suppose there are sections enough now in our 1 86 PROSERPINA. grand botanical collections, and you can find it all out for yourself. That you should be able to ask a question clearly, is two-thirds of the way to getting it answered ; and I think this chapter of mine will at least enable you to ask some questions about the stem, though what a stem is, truly, " I am not sent to tell thee, for I do not know." Knaeesborough, 30th Apiil, 1876. I see by the date of last paragraph that this chapter has been in my good Aylesbury printer's type for more than a year and a half. At this rate, Proserpina has a distant chance of being finished in the spirit-land, with more accurate in- formation derived from the archangel Uriel himself, (not that he is likely to know much about the matter, if he keeps on letting himself be prevented from ever seeing foliage in spring-time by the black demon-winds,) about the year 2000. In the meantime feeling that perhaps I am sent to tell my readers a little more than is above told, I have had recourse to my botanical friend, good Mr. Oliver of Kew, who has taught me, first, of palms, that they actually stitch themselves into the ground, with a long dipping loop, up and down, of the root fibres, concerning which sempstress- work I shall have a month's puzzlement before I IX. OUTSIDE AND IN. 1 8/ can report on it ; secondly, that all the increment of tree stem is, by division and multiplication of the cells of the wood, a process not in the least to be described as 'sending down roots from the leaf to the ground.' I suspected as much in be- ginning to revise this chapter ; but hold to my judgment in not cancelling it. For this multipli- cation of the cells is at least compelled by an influence which passes from the leaf to the ground, and vice versa ; and which is at present best con- ceivable to me by imagining the continual and invisible descent of lightning from electric cloud by a conducting rod, endowed with the power of softly splitting the rod into two rods, each as thick as the original one. Studying microscopically, we should then see the molecules of copper, as we see the cells of the wood, dividing and increasing, each one of them into two. But the visible result, and mechanical conditions of growth, would still be the same as if the leaf actually sent down a new root fibre ; and, more than this, the currents of accumulating substance, marked by the grain of the wood, are, I think, quite plainly and abso- lutely those of streams flowing only from the leaves downwards ; never from the root up, nor of mere lateral increase. I must look over all my drawings again, and at tree stems again, with more separate 1 88 PROSERPINA. study of the bark and pith in those museum sections, before I can assert this ; but there will be no real difficulty in the investigation. If the increase of the wood is lateral only, the currents round the knots will be compressed at the sides, and open above and below ; but if downwards, compressed above the knot and open below it. The nature of the force itself, and the manner of its ordinances in direction, remain, and must for ever remain, inscrutable as our own passions, in the hand of the God of all Spirits, and of all Flesh. " Drunk is each ridge, of thy cup drinking, Each clod relenteth at thy dressing, Thy cloud-borne waters inly sinking, Fair spring sproutes forth, blest with thy blessing ; The fertile year is with thy bounty crouned, And where thou go'st, thy goings fat the ground. Plenty bedews the desert places, A hedge of mirth the hills encloseth. The fields with flockes have hid their faces, A robe of corn the valleys clotheth. Deserts and hills and fields and valleys all, Rejoice, shout, sing, and on thy name do call." 189 CHAPTER X. THE BARK. I. T)HILOLOGISTS are continually collecting instances, like our friend the French critic of Virgil, of the beauty of finished language, or the origin of unfinished, in the imitation of natural sounds. But such collections give an entirely false idea of the real power of language, unless they are balanced by an opponent list of the words which signally fail of any such imitative virtue, and whose sound, if one dwelt upon it, is destructive of their meaning. 2. For instance. Few sounds are more distinct in their kind, or one would think more likely to be vocally reproduced in the word which sig- nified them, than that of a swift rent in strongly woven cloth ; and the English words ' rag ' and ragged, with the Greek prjyvvjxi, do indeed in a measure recall the tormenting effect upon the ear. But it is curious that the verb which is meant to express the actual origination of rags, should 190 PROSERPINA. rhyme with two words entirely musical and peace- ful— words, indeed, which I always reserve for final resource in passages which I want to be soothing as well as pretty, — ' fair,' and ' air ' ; while, in its orthography, it is identical with the word repre- senting the bodily sign of tenderest passion, and grouped with a multitude of others,* in which the mere insertion of a consonant makes such wide difference of sentiment as between ' dear ' and ' drear,' or ' pear ' and ' spear.' The Greek root, on the other hand, has persisted in retaining some vestige of its excellent dissonance, even where it has parted with the last vestige of the idea it was meant to convey ; and when Burns did his best, — and his best was above most men's, — to gather pleasant liquid and labial syllabling round gentle meaning, in " Bonnie lassie, will ye go, Will ye go, will ye go, Bonnie lassie, will ye go, To the birks of Aberfeldy ? " Tie certainly had little thought that the delicately crisp final k, in birk, was the remnant of a mag- nificent Greek effort to express the rending of the * It is one of the three cadences, (the others being of the words rhyming to ' mind ' and ' way,') used by Sir Philip Sidney in his marvellous paraphrase of the 55th Psalm. X. THE BARK. 191 earth by earthquake, in the wars of the giants. In the middle of that word ' esmaragese,' we get our own beggar's ' rag ' for a pure root, which afterwards, through the Latin frango, softens into our 'break,' and 'bark/ — the 'broken thing'; that idea of its rending around the tree's stem having been, in the very earliest human efforts at botanical description, attached to it by the pure Aryan race, watching the strips of rosy satin break from the birch stems, in the Aberfeldys of Imaus. 3. That this tree should have been the only one which " the Aryans, coming as conquerors from the North, were able to recognize in Hindostan,"* and should therefore also be " the only one whose name is common to Sanskrit, and to the languages of Europe," delighted me greatly, for two reasons : the first, for its proof that in spite of the develop- ment of species, the sweet gleaming of birch stem has never changed its argent and sable for any unchequered heraldry ; and the second, that it gave proof of a much more important fact, the keenly accurate observation of Aryan foresters at that early date ; for the fact is that the breaking of the thin- beaten silver of the birch trunk is so delicate, and its smoothness so graceful, that until I painted it with * Lectures on the Families of Speech, by the Rev. F. Faner. Longman, 1870. Page 81. 192 PKOSERI'INA. care, I was not altogether clear-headed myself about the way in which the chequering was done : nor until Fors to-day brought me to the house of one of my father's friends at Carshalton, and gave me three birch stems to look at just outside the window, did I perceive it to be a primal question about them, what it is that blanches that dainty dress of theirs, or, anticipatorily, weaves. What difference is there between the making of the corky excrescence of other trees, and of this almost transparent fine white linen ? I perceive that the older it is, within limits, the finer and whiter ; hoary tissue, instead of hoary air — honouring the tree's aged body ; the outer sprays have no silvery light on their youth. Does the membrane thin itself into whiteness merely by stretching, or produce an outer film of new substance ?* 4. And secondly, this investiture, why is it trans- verse to the trunk, — swathing it, as it were, in bands ? Above all, — when it breaks, — why does it break round the tree instead of down ? All other bark breaks as anything would, naturally, round a swelling rod, but this, as if the stem were growing longer ; until, indeed, it reaches farthest heroic old * I only profess, you will please to observe, to ask questions in Proserpina. Never to answer any. But of course this chapter is to introduce some further inquiry in another place. X. THE BARK. 1 93 age, when the whiteness passes away again, and the rending is like that of other trees, downwards. So that, as it were in a changing language, we have the great botanical fact twice taught us, by this tree of Eden, that the skins of trees differ from the skins of the higher animals in that, for the most part, they won't stretch, and must be worn torn. So that in fact the most popular arrangement of vegetative adult costume is Irish ; a normal investiture in honourable rags ; and decorousness of tattering, as of a banner borne in splendid ruin through storms of war. 5. Now therefore, if we think of it, we have five distinct orders of investiture for organic creatures ; first, mere secretion of mineral substance, chiefly lime, into a hard shell, which, if broken, can only be mended, like china — by sticking it together; secondly, organic substance of armour which grows into its proper shape at once for good and all, and can't be mended at all, if broken, (as of insects) ; thirdly, organic substance of skin, which stretches, as the creature grows, by cracking, over a fresh skin which is supplied beneath it, as in bark of trees ; fourthly, organic substance of skin cracked symmetrically into plates or scales which can increase all round their edges, and are 13 194 PROSERPINA. connected by softer skin, below, as in fish and rep- tiles, (divided with exquisite lustre and flexibility, in feathers of birds) ; and lastly, true elastic skin, extended in soft unison with the creature's growth, — blushing with its blood, fading with its fear ; breathing with its breath, and guarding its life with sentinel beneficence of pain. 6. It is notable, in this higher and lower range of organic beauty, that the decoration, by pattern and colour, which is almost universal in the pro- tective coverings of the middle ranks of animals, should be reserved in vegetables for the most living part of them, the flower only : and that among animals, few but the malignant and sense- less are permitted, in the corrugation of their armour, to resemble the half-dead trunk of the tree, as they float beside it in the tropical river. I must, however, leave the scale patterns of the palms and other inlaid tropical stems for after- examination, — content, at present, with the general idea of the bark of an outlaid tree as the suc- cessive accumulation of the annual protecting film, rent into ravines of slowly increasing depth, and coloured, like the rock, whose stability it begins to emulate, with the grey or gold of clinging lichen and embroidering moss. 195 CHAPTER XI. GENEALOGY. I. "T) ETURNING, after more than a year's J-^- sorrowful interval, to my Sicilian fields, — not incognisant, now, of some of the darker realms of Proserpina ; and with feebler heart, and, it may be, feebler wits, for wandering in her brighter ones, — I find what I had written by way of sequel to the last chapter, somewhat difficult, and extremely tiresome. Not the less, after giving fair notice of the difficulty, and asking due pardon for the tire- someness, I am minded to let it stand ; trusting to end, with it, once for all, investigations of the kind. But in finishing this first volume of my School Botany, I must try to give the reader some notion of the plan of the book, as it now, during the time for thinking over it which illness left me, has got itself arranged in my mind, within limits of possible execution. And this the rather, because I wish also to state, some- what more gravely than I have yet done, the 196 PROSERPINA. grounds on which I venture here to reject many of the received names of plants ; and to substitute others for them, relating to entirely different attributes from those on which their present nomenclature is confusedly edified. I have already in some measure given the reasons for this change ; * but I feel that, for the sake of those among my scholars who have laboriously learned the accepted names, I ought now also to explain its method more completely. 2. I call the present system of nomenclature confusedly edified, because it introduces, — without, apparently, any consciousness of the inconsistency, and certainly with no apology for it, — names founded sometimes on the history of plants, sometimes on their qualities, sometimes on their forms, sometimes on their products, and sometimes on their poetical associations. On their history — as ' Gentian ' from King Gen- tius, and ' Funkia ' from Dr. Funk. On their qualities — as ' Scrophularia ' from its (quite uncertified) use in scrofula. On their forms — as the ' Caryophylls ' from having petals like husks of nuts. On their products — as ' Cocos nucifera ' from its nuts. * See Introduction, pp. 5 — 8. XI. GENEALOGY. 197 And on their poetical associations, — as the ' Star of Bethlehem ' from its imagined resemblance to the light of that seen by the Magi. 3. Now, this variety of grounds for nomencla- ture might patiently, and even with advantage, be permitted, provided the grounds themselves were separately firm, and the inconsistency of method advisedly allowed, and, in each case, justified. If the histories of King Gentius and Dr. Funk are indeed important branches of human knowledge ; — if the Scrophulariaceae do indeed cure King's Evil ; — if pinks be best described in their likeness to nuts ; — and the Star of Bethlehem verily remind us of Christ's Nativity, — by all means let these and other such names be evermore retained. But if Dr. Funk be not a person in any special manner needing either stellification or florification ; if neither herb nor flower can avail, more than the touch of monarchs, against hereditary pain ; if it be no better account of a pink to say it is nut-leaved, than of a nut to say it is pink-leaved ; and if the modern mind, incurious respecting the journeys of wise men, has already confused, in its Bradshaw's Bible, the station of Bethlehem with that of Bethel* it is certainly time to take some order with the partly false, partly useless, and partly * See Sowerby's nomenclature of the flower, vol. ix., plate 1703. 198 PROSERPINA. forgotten literature of the Fields ; and, before we bow our children's memories to the burden of it, ensure that there shall be matter worth carriage in the load. 4. And farther, in attempting such a change, we must be clear in our own minds whether we wish our nomenclature to tell us something about the plant itself, or only to tell us the place it holds in relation to other plants : as, for instance, in the Herb-Robert, would it be well to christen it, shortly, ' Rob Roy,' because it is pre-eminently red, and so have done with it ; — or rather to dwell on its family connections, and call it ' Macgregoraceous '? 5. Before we can wisely decide this point, we must resolve whether our botany is intended mainly to be useful to the vulgar, or satisfactory to the scientific elite. For if we give names charac- terizing individuals, the circle of plants which any country possesses may be easily made known to the children who live in it : but if we give names founded on the connexion between these and others at the Antipodes, the parish schoolmaster will cer- tainly have double work ; and it may be doubted greatly whether the parish schoolboy, at the end of the lecture, will have half as many ideas. 6. Nevertheless, when the features of any great order of plants are constant, and, on the whole, Drawn ty J Ruskm Engravod br G Allen , VII. CONTORTA PURPUREA. PURPLE WREATH-WORT XI. GENEALOGY 199 represented with great clearness both in cold and warm climates, it may be desirable to express this their citizenship of the world in definite nomen- clature. But my own method, so far as hitherto developed, consists essentially in fastening the thoughts of the pupil on the special character of the plant, in the place where he is likely to see it ; and therefore, in expressing the power of its race and order in the wider world, rather by reference to mythological associations than to botanical structure. 7. For instance, Plate VII. represents, of its real size, an ordinary spring flower in our English mountain fields. It is an average example, — nut one of rare size under rare conditions, — rather smaller than the average, indeed, that 1 might get it well into my plate. It is one of the flowers whose names I think good to change ; but I look carefully through the existing titles belonging to it and its fellows, that I may keep all I expedi- ently can. I find, in the first place, that Linnaeus called one group of its relations, Ophryds, from Ophrys, — Greek for the eyebrow, — on account of their resemblance to the brow of an animal frown- ing, or to the overshadowing casque of a helmet. I perceive this to be really a very general aspect of the flower ; and therefore, no less than in respect 200 PROSERPINA. to Linnaeus, I adopt this for the total name of the order, and call them 'Ophrydae,' or, shortly, ' Ophryds.' 8. Secondly : so far as I know these flowers myself, I perceive them to fall practically into three divisions, — one, growing in English meadows and Alpine pastures, and always adding to their beauty ; another, growing in all sorts of places, very ugly itself, and adding to the ugliness of its indiscriminated haunts ; and a third, growing mostly up in the air, with as little root as possible, and of gracefully fantastic forms, such as this kind of nativity and habitation might presuppose. For the present, I am satisfied to give names to these three groups only. There may be plenty of others which I do not know, and which other people may name, according to their knowledge. But in all these three kinds known to me, I perceive one constant characteristic to be some manner of distortion ; and I desire that fact,— marking a spiritual (in my sense of the word) character of extreme mystery, — to be the first enforced on the mind of the young learner. It is exhibited to the English child, primarily, in the form of the stalk of each flower, attaching it to the central virga. This stalk is always twisted once and a half round, as if some- XI. GENEALOGY. 201 body had been trying to wring the blossom off; and the name of the family, in Proserpina, will therefore be ' Contorta ' * in Latin, and ' Wreathe- wort' in English. Farther : the beautiful power of the one I have drawn in its spring life, is in the opposition of its dark purple to the primrose in England, and the pale yellow anemone in the Alps. And its indi- vidual name will be, therefore, ' Contorta purpurea ' — Purple Wreathe-wort. And in drawing it, I take care to dwell on the strength of its colour, and to show thoroughly that it is a dark blossom,f before I trouble myself about its minor characters. 9. The second group of this kind of flowers live, as I said, in all sorts of places ; but mostly, I think, in disagreeable ones, — torn and irregular ground, under alternations of unwholesome heat and shade, and among swarms of nasty insects. I cannot yet venture on any bold general state- ment about them, but I think that is mostly their way ; and at all events, they themselves are in the habit of dressing in livid and unpleasant * Linnaeus used this term for the Oleanders ; but evidently with less accuracy than usual. t "&r$rt iropipvpociSri" says Dioscorides, of the race generally, — but " S.v6-q Si iiiroiropipvpa" of this particular one. 202 PROSERPINA. colours ; and are distinguished from all other flowers by twisting, not only their stalks, but one of their petals, not once and a half only, but two or three times round, and putting it far out at the same time, as a foul jester would put out his tongue : while also the singular power of grotesque mimicry, which, though strong also in the other groups of their race, seems in the others more or less playful, is, in these, definitely degraded, and, in aspect, malicious. *io. Now I find the Latin name ' Satyrium ' attached already to one sort of these flowers ; and we cannot possibly have a better one for all of them. It is true that, in its first Greek form, Dioscorides attaches it to a white, not a livid, flower ; and I dare say there are some white ones of the breed : but, in its full sense, the term is exactly right for the entire group of ugly blossoms of which the characteristic is the spiral curve and protraction of their central petal : and every other form of Satyric ugliness which I find among the Ophryds, whatever its colour, will be grouped with them. And I make them central, because this humour runs through the whole order, and is, indeed, their distinguishing sign. ii. Then the third group, living actually in the air, and only holding fast by, without nourishing XI. GENEALOGY. 203 itself from, the ground, rock, or tree-trunk on. which it is rooted, may of course most naturally and accurately be called ' Aeria,' as it has long been popularly known in English by the name of Air- plant. Thus we have one general name for all these creatures, ' Ophryd ' ; and three family or group names, Contorta, Satyrium, and Aeria, — every one of these titles containing as much accurate fact about the thing named as I can possibly get packed into their syllables : and I will trouble my young readers with no more divisions of the order. And if their parents, tutors, or governors, after this fair warning, choose to make them learn, instead, the seventy-seven different names with which botanist- heraldries have beautifully ennobled the family, — all I can say is, let them at least begin by learning them themselves. They will be found in due order in pages 1084, 1085 of Loudon's Cyclopaedia.* 12. But now, farther: the student will observe that the name of the total order is Greek ; while I offer a sample of two dozen for good papas and mammas to begin with : — Angraecum. Corallorrhiza. Ornilhidium. Prescotia. Anisopetalum. Cryptarrhena. Ornithocephalus. Renanthera. Brassavola. Eulophia. Platanthera. Rodriguezia. Brassia. Gymnadenia. Pleurothallis. Stenorhyncus. Caelogyne. Microstylis. Pogonia. Trizeuxis. Calopogon. Octomeria. Polystachya. Xylobium. 204 PROSERPINA. the three family ones are Latin, although the central one is originally Greek also. I adopt this as far as possible for a law through my whole plant nomenclature. 13. Farther: the terminations of the Latin family names will be, for the most part, of the masculine, feminine, and neuter forms, us, a, um, with these following attached conditions. (I.) Those terminating in 'us,' though often of feminine words, as the central Arbor, will indicate either real masculine strength (quercus, laurus), or conditions of dominant majesty (cedrus), of stubborn- ness and enduring force (Crataegus), or of peasant- like commonalty and hardship (juncus) ; softened, as it may sometimes happen, into gentleness and beneficence (thymus). The occasional forms in 'er' and ' il ' will have similar power (acer, basil). (11.) Names with the feminine termination 'a,' if they are real names of girls, will always mean flowers that are perfectly pretty and per- fectly good, (Lucia, Viola, Margarita, Clarissa). Names terminating in ' a ' which are not also accepted names of girls, may sometimes be none the less honourable, (Primula, Campanula,) but for the most part will signify either plants that are only good and worthy in a nursy sort of way, (Salvia,) or that are good without being XI. GENEALOGY. 205 pretty, (Lavandula,) or pretty without being good, (Kalmia). But no name terminating in 'a' will be attached to a plant that is neither good nor pretty. (ill.) The neuter names terminating in ' um ' will always indicate some power either of active or suggestive evil, (Conium, Solanum, Satyrium,) or a relation, more or less definite, to death ; but this relation to death may sometimes be noble, or pathetic, — "which to-day is, and to-morrow is cast into the oven," — Lilium. But the leading position of the neuters in the plant's double name must be noticed by students unacquainted with Latin, in order to distinguish them from plural genitives, which will always, of course, be the second word (Francesca Fontium, Francesca of the Springs). 14. Names terminating in 'is' and ' e,' if defi- nitely names of women, (Iris, Amaryllis, Alcestis, Daphne,) will always signify flowers of great beauty, and noble historic association. If not definitely names of women, they will yet indicate some speciality of sensitiveness, or association with legend (Berberis, Clematis). No neuters in 'e' will be » admitted. 15. Participial terminations (Impatiens), with neuters in ' en ' (Cyclamen), will always be descrip- 206 PROSERPINA. tive of some special quality or form, — leaving it indeterminate if good or bad, until explained. It will be manifestly impossible to limit either these neuters or the feminines in ' is ' to Latin forms ; but we shall always know by their termination that they cannot be generic names, if we are strict in forming these last on a given method. 1 6. How little method there is in our present formation of them, I am myself more and more surprised as I consider. A child is shown a rose, and told that he is to call every flower like that, ' Rosaceous ' ; * he is next shown a lily, and told that he is to call every flower like that, ' Liliaceous ' ; — so far well ; but he is next shown a daisy, and is not at all allowed to call every flower Hke that, ' Daisaceous,' but he must call it, like the fifth order of architecture, ' Composite ' ; and being next shown a pink, he is not allowed to call other pinks ' Pinkaceous,' but ' Nut-leaved ' ; and being next shown a pease-blossom, he is not allowed to call other pease-blossoms ' Peasaceous,' but, in a brilliant burst of botanical imagination, he is incited to call it by two names instead of one, ' Butterfly-aceous ' from its flower, and ' Pod-aceous ' from its seed ; — the inconsistency of the terms thus enforced upon him being perfected * Compare Chapter V., § 7. XI. GENEALOGY. 207 in their inaccuracy, for a daisy is not one whit more composite than Queen of the Meadow, or Jura Jacinth ; * and ' legumen ' is not Latin for a pod, but ' siliqua,' — so that no good scholar could remember Virgil's 'siliqua quassante legumen,' with- out overthrowing all his Pisan nomenclature. 17. Farther. If we ground our names of the higher orders on the distinctive characters of form in plants, these are so many, and so subtle, that we are at once involved in more investigations than a young learner has ever time to follow success- fully, and they must be at all times liable to dislocations and rearrangements on the discovery of any new link in the infinitely entangled chain. But if we found our higher nomenclature at once on historic fact, and relative conditions of climate and character, rather than of form, we may at once distribute our flora into unalterable groups, to which we may add at our pleasure, but which will never need disturbance ; far less, reconstruction. 18. For instance, — and to begin, — it is an his- torical fact that for many centuries the English nation believed that the Founder of its religion, spiritually, by the mouth of the King who spake of all herbs, had likened Himself to two flowers, — the Rose of Sharon, and Lily of the Valley. * 'Jacinthus Jurae,' changed from ' Hyacinthus Comosus.' 208 PROSERPINA. The fact of this belief is one of the most im- portant in the history of England, — that is to say, of the mind or heart of England : and it is connected solemnly with the heart of Italy also, by the closing cantos of the Paradiso. I think it well therefore that our two first generic, or at least commandant, names heading the out-laid and in-laid divisions of plants, should be of the rose and lily, with such meaning in them as may remind us of this fact in the history of human mind. It is also historical that the personal appearing of this Master of our religion was spoken of by our chief religious teacher in these terms : " The Grace of God, that bringeth salvation, hath ap- peared unto all men." And it is a constant fact that this ' grace ' or ' favour ' of God is spoken of as " giving us to eat of the Tree of Life." 19. Now, comparing the botanical facts I have to express, with these historical ones, I find that the rose tribe has been formed among flowers, not in distant and monstrous geologic aeras, but in the human epoch ; — that its ' grace ' or favour has been in all countries so felt as to cause its acceptance everywhere for the most perfect physical type of womanhood ; — and that the characteristic fruit of the tribe is so sweet, that it has become XI. GENEALOGY. 200, symbolic at once of the subtlest temptation, and the kindest ministry to the earthly passion of the human race. " Comfort me with apples, for I am sick of love." 20. Therefore I shall call the entire order of these flowers ' Charites,' (Graces,) and they will be divided into these five genera, Rosa, Persica, Pomum, Rubra, and Fragaria. Which sequence of names I do not think the young learner will have difficulty in remembering ; nor in under- standing why I distinguish the central group by the fruit instead of the flower. And if he once clearly master the structure and relations of these five genera, he will have no difficulty in attaching to them, in a satellitic or subordinate manner, such inferior groups as that of the Silver- weed, or the Tormentilla ; but all he will have to learn by heart and rote, will be these six names ; the Greek Master-name, Charites, and the five generic names, in each case belonging to plants, as he will soon find, of extreme per- sonal interest to him. 21. I have used the word ' Order ' as the name of our widest groups, in preference to ' Class,' because these widest groups will not always in- clude flowers like each other in form, or equal to each other in vegetative rank ; but they will be 2IO PROSERPINA. 1 Orders,' literally like those of any religious or chivalric association, having some common link rather intellectual than national, — the Charites, for instance, linked by their kindness, — the Oreiades, by their mountain seclusion, as Sisters of Charity or Monks of the Chartreuse, irrespective of ties of relationship. Then beneath these orders will come, what may be rightly called, either as above in Greek derivation, ' Genera,' or in Latin, ' Gentes,' for which, however, I choose the Latin word, because Genus is disagreeably liable to be con- fused on the ear with ' genius ' ; but Gens, never ; and also ' nomen gentile ' is a clearer and better expression than ' nomen generosum,' and I will not coin the barbarous one, ' genericum.' The name of the Gens, (as ' Lucia,') with an attached epithet, as ' Verna,' will, in most cases, be enough to characterize the individual flower ; but if farther subdivision be necessary, the third order will be that of Families, indicated by a ' nomen familiare ' added in the third place of nomenclature, as Lucia Verna, — Borealis ; and no farther subdivision will ever be admitted. I avoid the word ' species ' — originally a bad one, and lately vulgarized beyond endurance — altogether. And varieties belonging to narrow localities, or induced by horticulture, may be named as they please by the people living near XI. GENEALOGY. 211 the spot, or by the gardener who grows them ; but will not be acknowledged by Proserpina. Never- theless, the arbitrary reduction under Ordines, Gentes, and Familia;, is always to be remembered as one of massive practical convenience only ; and the more subtle arborescence of the infinitely varying structures may be followed, like a human genealogy, as far as we please, afterwards ; when once we have got our common plants clearly arranged and intelligibly named. 22. But now we find ourselves in the presence of a new difficulty, the greatest we have to deal with in the whole matter. Our new nomenclature, to be thoroughly good, must be acceptable to scholars in the five great languages, Greek, Latin, French, Italian, and English ; and it must be acceptable by them in teaching the native children of each country. I shall not be satisfied, unless I can feel that the little maids who gather their first violets under the Acropolis rock, may receive for them ^Eschylean words again with joy. I shall not be content, unless the mothers watching their children at play in the Ceramicus of Paris, under the scarred ruins of her Kings' palace, may yet teach them there to know the flowers which the Maid of Orleans gathered at Domrcmy. I shall not be satisfied unless every IS 212 PROSERPINA. word I ask from the lips of the children of Florence and Rome, may enable them better to praise the flowers that are chosen by the hand of Matilda,* and bloom around the tomb of Vergil. 23. Now in this first example of nomenclature, the Master-name, being pure Greek, may easily be accepted by Greek children, remembering that certain also of their own poets, if they did not call the flower a Grace itself, at least thought of it as giving gladness to the Three in their dances.t But for French children the word 'Grace' has been doubly and trebly corrupted ; first, by entirely false theological scholarship, mistaking the ' Favour ' or Grace done by God to good men, for the ' Miseri- cordia,' or mercy, shown by Him to bad ones ; and so, in practical life, finally substituting 'Grace' as a word of extreme and mortal prayer, for ' Merci,' and of late using ' Merci ' in a totally ridiculous and perverted power, for the giving of thanks, (or refusal of offered good) : while the literally derived word ' Charite ' has become, in the modern mind, a gift, whether from God or man, only to the wretched, never to the happy : and lastly, ' Grace ' in its physical sense has been perverted, by their * " Cantando, e sceglicndo fior di fiore Onde era picta tutta la sua via." Furg., xxviii. 35. ■j" " koX OtoioL Teplrvd." XI. GENEALOGY. 21 3 social vulgarity, into an idea, whether with respect to form or motion, commending itself rather to the ballet-master than either to the painter or the priest. For these reasons, the Master name of this family, for my French pupils, must be simply ' Rhodiades,' which will bring, for them, the entire group of names into easily remembered symmetry ; and the English form of the same name, Rhodiad, is to be used by English scholars also for all tribes of this group except the five principal ones. 24. Farther, in every gens of plants, one will be chosen as the representative, which, if any, will be that examined and described in the course of this work, if I have opportunity of doing so. This representative flower will always be a wild one, and of the simplest form which completely expresses the character of the plant ; existing divinely and unchangeably from age to age, un- grieved by man's neglect, and inflexible by his power. And this divine character will be expressed by the epithet ' Sacred,' taking the sense in which we attach it to a dominant and christened majesty, when it belongs to the central type of any forceful order ; — ' Quercus sacra,' ' Laurus sacra/ etc., — the word ' Benedicta,' or ' Benedictus,' being used instead, if the plant be too humble to bear, without some 214 PROSERPINA. discrepancy and unbecomingness, the higher title ; as ' Carduus Benedictus,' Holy Thistle. 25. Among the gentes of flowers bearing girls' names, the dominant one will be simply called the Queen, ' Rosa Regina,' ' Rose the Queen ' (the English wild rose) ; ' Clarissa Regina,' ' Cla- rissa the Queen ' (Mountain Pink) ; ' Lucia Regina,' ' Lucy the Queen ' (Spring Gentian), or in simpler English, ' Lucy of Teesdale,' as ' Harry of Mon- mouth.' The ruling flowers of groups which bear names not yet accepted for names of girls, will be called simply ' Domina,' or shortly ' Donna.' ' Rubra domina ' (wild raspberry) : the wild straw- berry, because of her use in heraldry, will bear a name of her own, exceptional, ' Cora coronalis.' 26. These main points being understood, and concessions made, we may first arrange the greater orders of land plants in a group of twelve, easily remembered, and with very little forcing. There must be some forcing always to get things into quite easily tenable form, for Nature always has her ins and outs. But it is curious how fitly and frequently the number of twelve may be used for memoria technica ; and in this instance the Greek derivative names fall at once into harmony with the most beautiful parts of Greek mythology, leading on to early Christian tradition. XI. GENEALOGY. 21 5 27. Their series will be, therefore, as follows ; the principal subordinate groups being at once placed under each of the great ones. The reasons for occasional appearance of inconsistency will be afterwards explained, and the English and French forms given in each case are the terms which wculd be used in answering the rapid question, ' Of what order is this flower ? ' the answer being, It is a ' Cyllenid,' a ' Pleiad,' or a ' Vestal,' as one would answer of a person, he is a Knight of St. John or Monk of St. Benedict ; while to the question, of what gens? we answer, a Stella or an Erica, as one would answer for a person, a Stuart or Plantagenet. I. CHARITES. Eng. CHARIS. Fr. rhodiade. Rosa. Persica. Pomum. Rubra. Fragaria. II. URANIDES. Eng. URANID. Fr. URANIDE. Lucia. Campanula. Convoluta. in. CYLLENIDES. Eng. CYLLENID. Fr. NEPHELIDE. Stella. Francesca. Primula. iv. OREIADES. Eng. OREIAD. Fr. OREADE. Erica. Myrtilla. Aurora. 2l6 PROSERPINA. v. PLEIADES. Eng. PLEIAD. Fr. PLEIADE. Silvia. Anemone. vi. ARTEMIDES. Eng. ARTEMID. Fr. ARTEMIDE. Clarissa. Lychnis. Scintilla. Mica. vn. VESTALES. Eng. VESTAL. Fr. VESTALE. Mentha. Melitta. Basil. Salvia. Lavandula. Thymus. vm. CYTHERIDES. Eng. CYTHERID. Fr. CYTHERIDE. Viola. Veronica. Giulietta. ix. HELIADES. Eng. ALCESTID. Fr. HELIADE. Clytia. Margarita. Alcestis. Falconia. Carduus. x. DELPHIDES. Eng. DELPHID. Fr. DELPHIDE. Laurus. Granata. Myrtus. xi. HESPERIDES. Eng. HESPERID. Fr. HESPERIDE. Aurantia. Aegle. xi. ATHENAIDES. Eng. ATHENAID Fr. ATHENAIDE. Olea. Fraxinus. XI. GENEALOGY. 217 I will shortly note the changes of name in their twelve orders, and the reasons for them. I. Charites. — The only change made in the nomenclature of this order is the slight one of ' rubra ' for ' rubus ' : partly to express true sister- hood with the other Charites ; partly to enforce the idea of redness, as characteristic of the race, both in the lovely purple and russet of their winter leafage, and in the exquisite bloom of scarlet on the stems in strong young shoots. They have every right to be placed among the Charites, first because the rasp- berry is really a more important fruit in domestic economy than the strawberry ; and, secondly, because the wild bramble is often in its wandering sprays even more graceful than the rose ; and in blossom and fruit the best autumnal gift that English Nature has appointed for her village children. II. URANIDES. — Not merely because they are all of the colour of the sky, but also sacred to Urania in their divine purity. ' Convoluta ' instead of 'convolvulus,' chiefly for the sake of euphony ; but also because Pervinca is to be included in this group. III. Cyllenides. — Named from Mount Cyllene in Arcadia, because the three races included in the order alike delight in rocky ground, and in the cold or moist air of mountain-clouds. 21 8 PROSERPINA. IV. Oreiades. — Described in next chapter. v. Pleiades.— From the habit of the flowers belonging to this order to get into bright local clusters. . Silvia, for the wood-sorrel, will I hope be an acceptable change to my girl-readers. VI. ARTEMIDES. — Dedicate to Artemis for their expression of energy, no less than purity. This character was rightly felt in them by whoever gave the name ' Dianthus ' to their leading race ; a name which I should have retained if it had not been bad Greek. I wish them, by their name ' Clarissa,' to recall the memory of St. Clare, as * Francesca ' that of St. Francis.* The ' issa,' not without honour to the greatest of our English moral story-tellers, is added for the practical reason, that I think the sound will fasten in the minds of children the essential characteristic of * The four races of this order are more naturally distinct than botanists have recognized. In Clarissa, the petal is cloven into a fringe at the outer edge ; in Lychnis, the petal is terminated in two rounded lobes, and the fringe withdrawn t,o the top of the limb ; in Scintilla, the petal is divided into two sharp lobes, without any fringe of the limb ; and in Mica, the minute and scarcely visible flowers have simple and far separate petals. The confusion of these four great natural races under the vulgar or accidental botanical names of spittle-plant, shore-plant, sand-plant, etc., has become entirely intolerable by any rational student ; but the names ' Scintilla,' substituted for Stellaria, and ' Mica ' for the utterly ridiculous and probably untrue Sagina, connect themselves naturally with Lychnis, in expression of the luminous power of the white and sparkling blossoms. XI. GENEALOGY. 219 the race, the cutting of the outer edge of the petal as if with scissors. VII. Vestales.— I allow this Latin form, because Hestiades would have been confused with Heliades. The order is named 'of the hearth,' from its manifold domestic use, and modest blossoming. VIII. Cytherides. — Dedicate to Venus, but in all purity and peace of thought. Giuletta, for the coarse, and more than ordinarily false, Polygala. ix. Heliades. — The sun-flowers* In English, Alcestid, in honour to Chaucer and the Daisy. X. Delphides.— Sacred to Apollo. Granata, changed from Punica, in honour to Granada and the Moors. XI. Hesperides. — Already a name given to the order. Aegle, prettier and more classic than Limonia, includes the idea of brightness in the blossom. XII. Athenaides.— I take Fraxinus into this group, because the mountain ash, in its hawthorn- scented flower, scarletest of berries, and exquisitely formed and finished leafage, belongs wholly to the floral decoration of our native rocks, and is associated with their human interests, though lightly, not less spiritually, than the olive with the mind of Greece. * Clytia will include all the true sun-flowers, and Falconia the hawkweeds ; but I have not yet completed the analysis of this vast and complex order, so as to determine the limits of Margarita and Alcestis. 220 PROSERPINA. 28. The remaining groups are in great part natural ; but I separate for subsequent study five orders of supreme domestic utility, the Mallows, Currants, Pease,* Cresses, and Cranesbills, from those which, either in fruit or blossom, are for finer pleasure or higher beauty. I think it will be generally interesting for children to learn those five names as an easy lesson, and gradually discover, wondering, the world that they include. I will give their terminology at length, separately. 29. One cannot, in all groups, have all the divi- sions of equal importance ; the Mallows are only placed with the other four for their great value in decoration of cottage gardens in autumn : and their softly healing qualities as a tribe. They will mentally connect the whole useful group with the three great ^Esculapiadae, Cinchona, Coffea, and Camellia. 30. Taking next the water-plants, crowned in the DROSIDi-E, which include the five great families, Juncus, Jacinthus, Amaryllis, Iris, and Lilium, and are masculine in their Greek name because their two first groups, Juncus and Jacinthus, are masculine, I * The reader must observe that the positions given in this more developed system to any flower do not interfere with arrangements either formerly or hereafter given for memoria technica. The name ot the pea, for instance (alata), is to be learned first among the twelve cinqfoils, p. 214, above; then transferred to its botanical place. XI. GENEALOGY. 221 gather together the three orders of TRITONIDES, which are notably trefoil; the NAIADES, notably quatrefoil, but for which I keep their present pretty name ; and the B ATRAC HIDES,* notably cinqfoil, for which I keep their present ugly one, only changing it from Latin into Greek. 31. I am not sure of being forgiven so readily for putting the Grasses, Sedges, Mosses, and Lichens together, under the great general head of Deme- tridae. But it seems to me the mosses and lichens belong no less definitely to Demeter, in being the first gatherers of earth on rock, and the first coverers of its sterile surface, than the grass which at last prepares it to the foot and to the food of man. And with the mosses I shall take all the especially moss-plants which otherwise are homeless or companionless, Drosera, and the like, and as a connecting link with the flowers belonging to the Dark Kora, the two strange orders of the Ophryds and Agarics. 32. Lastly will come the orders of flowers which may be thought of as belonging for the most part to the Dark Kora of the lower world, — having at least the power of death, if not its terror, given them, together with offices of comfort * The amphibious habit of this race is to me of more importance than its outlaid slructure. 222 PROSERPINA. and healing in sleep, or of strengthening, if not too prolonged, action on the nervous power of life. Of these, the first will be the DIONYSID^,— Hedera, Vitis, Liana; then the DRACONID^, — Atropa, Digitalis, Linaria ; and, lastly, the MOIRID^E, — Conium, Papaver, Solanum, Arum, and Nerium. 33. As I see this scheme now drawn out, simple as it is, the scope of it seems not only far too great for adequate completion by my own labour, but larger than the time likely to be given to botany by average scholars would enable them intelligently to grasp: and yet it includes, I sup- pose, not the tenth part of the varieties of plants respecting which, in competitive examination, a student of physical science is now expected to know, or at least assert on hearsay, sometliing. So far as I have influence with the young, myself, I would pray them to be assured that it is better to know the habits of one plant than the names of a thousand ; and wiser to be happily familiar with those that grow in the nearest field, than arduously cognisant of all that plume the isles of the Pacific, or illumine the Mountains of the Moon. Nevertheless, I believe that when once the general form of this system in Proserpina has been XI. GENEALOGY. 223 well learned, much other knowledge may be easily attached to it, or sheltered under the eaves of it : and in its own development, I believe everything may be included that the student will find useful, or may wisely desire to investigate, of properly European botany. But I am convinced that the best results of his study will be reached by a resolved adherence to extreme simplicity of primal idea, and primal nomenclature. 34. I do not think the need of revisal of our present scientific classification could be more clearly demonstrated than by the fact that laurels and roses are confused, even by Dr. Lindley, in the mind of his feminine readers ; the English word laurel, in the index to his first volume of Ladies' Botany, referring them to the cherries, under which the common laurel is placed as ' Prunus Lauro- cerasus,' while the true laurel, ' Laurus nobilis,' must be found in the index of the second volume, under the Latin form ' Laurus.' This accident, however, illustrates another, and a most important point to be remembered, in all arrangements whether of plants, minerals, or ani- mals. No single classification can possibly be perfect, or anything like perfect. It must be, at its best, a ground, or warp of arrangement only, through which, or over which, the cross threads 224 PROSERPINA. of another, — yes, and of many others, — must be woven in our minds. Thus the almond, though in the form and colour of its flower, and method of its fruit, rightly associated with the roses, yet by the richness and sweetness of its kernel must be held mentally connected with all plants that bear nuts. These assuredly must have something in their structure common, justifying their being gathered into a conceived or conceivable group of ' Nuciferae,' in which the almond, hazel, walnut, cocoa-nut, and such others would be considered as having relationship, at least in their power of secreting a crisp and sweet substance which is not wood, nor bark, nor pulp, nor seed-pabulum reducible to softness by boiling ; — but a quite separate substance, for which I do not know that there at present exists any botanical name, — of which, hitherto, I find no general account, and can only myself give so much, on reflection, as that it is crisp and close in texture, and always contains some kind of oil or milk. 35. Again, suppose the arrangement of plants could, with respect to their flowers and fruits, be made approximately complete, they must instantly be broken and reformed by comparison of their stems and leaves. The three creeping families of the Charites, — Rosa, Rubra, and Fragaria, — must XI. GENEALOGY. 225 then be frankly separated from the elastic Persica and knotty Pomum ; of which one wild and lovely species, the hawthorn, is no less notable for the massive accumulation of wood in the stubborn stem of it, than the wild rose for her lovely power of wreathing her garlands at pleasure wherever they are fairest, the stem following them and sustaining, where they will. 36. Thus, as we examine successively each part of any plant, new sisterhoods, and unthought-of fellowships, will be found between the most distant orders ; and ravines of unexpected separation open between those otherwise closely allied. Few bota- nical characters are more definite than the leaf structure illustrated in Plate VI., which has given to one group of the Drosidae the descriptive name of Ensatse, (see above, Chapter IX., § 11,) but this conformation would not be wisely permitted to interfere in the least with the arrangement founded on the much more decisive floral aspects of the Iris and Lily. So, in the fifth volume of 'Modern Painters,' the sword-like, or rather rapier-like, leaves of the pine are opposed, for the sake of more vivid realization, to the shield-like leaves of the greater number of inland trees ; but it would be absurd to allow this difference any share in botanical arrangement, — else we should find ourselves thrown 226 PROSERPINA. into sudden discomfiture by the wide-waving and opening foliage of the palms and ferns. 37. But through all the defeats by which insolent endeavours to sum the orders of Creation must be reproved, and in the midst of the successes by which patient insight will be surprised, the fact of the confirmation of species in plants and animals must remain always a miraculous one. What outstretched sign of constant Omnipotence can be more awful, than that the susceptibility to external influences, with the reciprocal power of transformation, in the organs of the plant ; and the infinite powers of moral training and mental conception over the nativity of animals, should be so restrained within impassable limits, and by incon- ceivable laws, that from generation to generation, under all the clouds and revolutions of heaven with its stars, and among all the calamities and convulsions of the Earth with her passions, the numbers and the names of her Kindred may still be counted for her in unfailing truth; — still the fifth sweet leaf unfold for the Rose, and the sixth spring for the Lily ; and yet the wolf rave tameless round the folds of the pastoral moun- tains, and yet the tiger flame through the forests of the night ! 227 CHAPTER XII. CORA AND KRONOS. I. /^\F all the lovely wild plants — and few, moun- ^-^' tain-bred, in Britain, are other than lovely, — that fill the clefts and crest the ridges of my Brantwood rock, the dearest to me, by far, are the clusters of whortleberry which divide possession of the lower slopes with the wood hyacinth and pervenche. They are personally and specially dear to me for their association in my mind with the woods of Montanvert ; but the plant itself, irre- spective of all accidental feeling, is indeed so beautiful in all its ways — so delicately strong in the spring of its leafage, so modestly wonderful in the formation of its fruit, and so pure in choice of its haunts, not capriciously or unfamiliarly, but growing in luxuriance through all the healthiest and sweetest seclusion of mountain territory throughout Europe, — that I think I may without any sharp remonstrance be permitted to express, for this once only, personal feeling in my nomenclature, 16 228 PROSERPINA. calling it in Latin ' Myrtilla Cara,' and in French ' Myrtille Cherie,' but retaining for it in English its simply classic name, ' Blue Whortle.' 2. It is the most common representative of the group of Myrtillse, which on reference to our classification will be found central between the Ericas and Aurorae. The distinctions between these three families may be easily remembered, and had better be learned before going farther; but first let us note their fellowship. They are all Oreiades, mountain plants ; in specialty, they are all strong in stem, low in stature, and the Ericse and Aurorae glorious in the flush of their infinitely exulting flowers, (" the rapture of the heath " — above spoken of, p. 96). But all the essential loveliness of the Myrtilla; is in their leaves and fruit : the first always exquisitely finished and grouped like the most precious decorative work of sacred painting ; the second, red or purple, like beads of coral or amethyst. Their minute flowers have rarely any general part or power in the colours of mountain ground ; but, examined closely, they are one of the chief joys of the traveller's rest among the Alps ; and full of exquisiteness unspeak- able, in their several bearings and miens of blossom, so to speak. Plate VIII. represents, however feebly, the proud bending back of her head by Myrtilla *^ Drawn "by J Rustan Engraved by G VIII. MYRTILLA REGINA. Sketched for her gesture only. Isella. 1877. XII. CORA AND KRONOS. 229 Regina * : an action as beautiful in her as it is terrible in the Kingly Serpent of Egypt. 3. The formal differences between these three families are trenchant and easily remembered. The Ericas are all quatrefoils, and quatrefoils of the most studied and accomplished symmetry ; and they bear no berries, but only dry seeds. The Myrtillae and Auroras are both Cinqfoil ; but the Myrtillae are symmetrical in their blossom, and the Auroras unsymmetrical. Farther, the Myrtillae are not absolutely determinate in the number of their foils, (this being essentially a characteristic of flowers exposed to much hardship,) and are thus sometimes quatrefoil, in sympathy with the Ericas. But the Auroras are strictly cinqfoil. These last are the only European form of a larger group, well named ' Azalea ' from the Greek a£a, dryness, and its adjective a^dkea, dry or parched ; and this name must be kept for the world-wide group, (including under it Rhododendron, but not Kalmia,) because there is an under-meaning in the word Aza, enabling it to be applied to the substance of dry earth, and indicating one of the great functions of the Oreiades, in common with the mosses, — the collection of earth upon rocks. * ' Arctostaphylos Alpina,' I believe ; but scarcely recognize the flower in my botanical books. 23O PROSERPINA. 4. Neither the Erica;, as I have just said, nor Aurora; bear useful fruit ; and the Erica? are named from their consequent worthlessness in the eyes of the Greek farmer ; they were the plants he 'tore up' for his bed, or signal-fire, his word for them including a farther sense of crushing or bruising into a heap. The Westmore- land shepherds now, alas ! burn them remorselessly on the ground, (and a year since had nearly set the copse of Brantwood on fire just above the house). The sense of parched and fruitless existence is given to the heaths, with beautiful application of the context, in our English translation of Jeremiah xvii. 6 ; but I find the plant there named is, in the Septuagint, Wild Tamarisk ; the mountains of Palestine being, I suppose, in that latitude, too low for heath, unless in the Lebanon. 5. But I have drawn the reader's thoughts to this great race of the Oreiades at present, because they place for us in the clearest light a question which I have finally to answer before closing the first volume of Proserpina : namely, what is the real difference between the three ranks of Vege- tative Humility, and Noblesse — the Herb, the Shrub, and the Tree? 6. Between the herb, which perishes annually, and the plants which construct year after year XII. CORA AND KRONOS. 23 1 an increasing stem, there is, of course, no diffi- culty of discernment ; but between the plants which, like these Oreiades, construct for themselves richest intricacy of supporting stem, yet scarcely rise a fathom's height above the earth they gather and adorn, — between these, and the trees that lift cathedral aisles of colossal shade on Andes and Lebanon, — where is the limit of kind to be truly set? 7. We have the three orders given, as no botanist could, in twelve lines by Milton : — " Then herbs of every leaf, that sudden flow'r'd, Op'ning their various colours, and made gay Her bosom swelling sweet ; and, these scarce blown, Forth flourish'd thick the clust'ring vine, forth crept The swelling gourd, up stood the corny reed Embattel'd in her field ; and th' humble shrub, And bush with frizzled hair implicit: last Rose, as in dance, the stately trees, and spread Their branches hung with copious fruits, or gemm'd Their blossoms ; with high woods the hills were crown'd ; With tufts the valleys and each fountain side ; With borders long the rivers." Only to learn, and be made to understand, these 232 PROSERPINA. twelve lines thoroughly would teach a youth more of true botany than an entire Cyclopaedia of modern nomenclature and description : they are, like all Milton's work, perfect in accuracy of epi- thet, while consummate in concentration. Exquisite in touch, as infinite in breadth, they gather into their unbroken clause of melodious compass the concep- tion at once of the Columbian prairie, the English cornfield, the Syrian vineyard, and the Indian grove. But even Milton has left untold, and for the instant perhaps unthought of, the most solemn difference of rank between the low and lofty trees, not in magnitude only, nor in grace, but in duration. 8. Yet let us pause before passing to this greater subject, to dwell more closely on what he has told us so clearly, — the difference in Grace, namely, between the trees that rise 'as in dance,' and 'the bush with frizzled hair.' For the bush form is essentially one taken by vegetation in some kind of distress ; scorched by heat, dis- couraged by darkness, or bitten by frost ; it is the form in which isolated knots of earnest plant life stay the flux of fiery sands, bind the rents of tottering crags, purge the stagnant air of cave or chasm, and fringe with sudden hues of unhoped spring the Arctic edge of retreating desolation. On the other hand, the trees which, as in sacred XII. CORA AND KKONOS. 23 1 an increasing stem, there is, of course, no diffi- culty of discernment ; but between the plants which, like these Oreiades, construct for themselves richest intricacy of supporting stem, yet scarcely rise a fathom's height above the earth they gather and adorn, — between these, and the trees that lift cathedral aisles of colossal shade on Andes and Lebanon, — where is the limit of kind to be truly set? 7. We have the three orders given, as no botanist could, in twelve lines by Milton : — " Then herbs of every leaf, that sudden flow'r'd, Op'ning their various colours, and made gay Her bosom swelling sweet ; and, these scarce blown, Forth flourish'd thick the clust'ring vine, forth crept The swelling gourd, up stood the corny reed Embattel'd in her field ; and th' humble shrub, And bush with frizzled hair itnplicit : last Rose, as in dance, the stately trees, and spread Their branches hung with copious fruits, or gemm'd Their blossoms ; with high woods the hills were crown'd ; With tufts the valleys and each fountain side ; With borders long the rivers." Only to learn, and be made to understand, these 232 PROSERPINA. twelve lines thoroughly would teach a youth more of true botany than an entire Cyclopaedia of modern nomenclature and description : they are, like all Milton's work, perfect in accuracy of epi- thet, while consummate in concentration. Exquisite in touch, as infinite in breadth, they gather into their unbroken clause of melodious compass the concep- tion at once of the Columbian prairie, the English cornfield, the Syrian vineyard, and the Indian grove. But even Milton has left untold, and for the instant perhaps unthought of, the most solemn difference of rank between the low and lofty trees, not in magnitude only, nor in grace, but in duration. 8. Yet let us pause before passing to this greater subject, to dwell more closely on what he has told us so clearly, — the difference in Grace, namely, between the trees that rise 'as in dance,' and ' the bush with frizzled hair.' For the bush form is essentially one taken by vegetation in some kind of distress ; scorched by heat, dis- couraged by darkness, or bitten by frost ; it is the form in which isolated knots of earnest plant life stay the flux of fiery sands, bind the rents of tottering crags, purge the stagnant air of cave or chasm, and fringe with sudden hues of unhoped spring the Arctic edge of retreating desolation. On the other hand, the trees which, as in sacred XII. CORA AND KRONOS. 237 upon a smooth bed of verdure. Between the tropics, the strength and luxury of vegetation give such a development to plants, that the smallest of the dicotyledonous family become shrubs.* It would seem as if the liliaceous plants, mingled with the gramina, assumed the place of the flowers of our meadows. Their form is indeed striking ; they dazzle by the variety and splendour of their colours ; but, too high above the soil, they disturb that harmonious relation which exists among the plants that compose our meadows and our turf. Nature, in her beneficence, has given the landscape under every zone its peculiar type of beauty. " After proceeding four hours across the savan- nahs, we entered into a little wood composed of shrubs and small trees, which is called El Pejual ; no doubt because of the great abundance of the ' Pejoa,' (Gaultheria odorata,) a plant with very odoriferous leaves. The steepness of the mountain became less considerable, and we felt an indescribable pleasure in examining the plants of this region. Nowhere, perhaps, can be found collected together in so small a space of ground, productions so beautiful, and so remarkable in regard to the * I do not see what this can mean. Primroses and cowslips can't become shrubs ; nor can violets, nor daisies, nor any other of our pet meadow flowers. 238 PROSERPINA. geography of plants. At the height of a thou- sand toises, the lofty savannahs of the hills terminate in a zone of shrubs, which by their appearance, their tortuous branches, their stiff leaves, and the dimensions and beauty of their purple flowers, remind us of what is called in the Cordilleras of the Andes the vegetation of the paramos* and the punas. We find there the family of the Alpine rhododendrons, the thibaudias, the andromedas, the vacciniums, and those befariasf with resinous leaves, which we have several times compared to the rhododendron of our European Alps. " Even when nature does not produce the same species in analogous climates, either in the plains of isothermal parallels, or on table-lands the temperature of which resembles that of places nearer the poles, we still remark a striking re- semblance of appearance and physiognomy in the vegetation of the most distant countries. This phenomenon is one of the most curious in the history of organic forms. I say the history ; for in vain would reason forbid man to form hypotheses on the origin of things : he is not * 'Deserts.' Punas is not in my Spanish dictionary, and the refer- ence to a former note is wrong in my edition of Humboldt, vol. iii., p. 490. t " The Alpine rose of equinoctial America," p. 453. XII. CORA AND KRONOS. 237 upon a smooth bed of verdure. Between the tropics, the strength and luxury of vegetation give such a development to plants, that the smallest of the dicotyledonous family become shrubs.* It would seem as if the liliaceous plants, mingled with the gramina, assumed the place of the flowers of our meadows. Their form is indeed striking ; they dazzle by the variety and splendour of their colours ; but, too high above the soil, they disturb that harmonious relation which exists among the plants that compose our meadows and our turf. Nature, in her beneficence, has given the landscape under every zone its peculiar type of beauty. " After proceeding four hours across the savan- nahs, we entered into a little wood composed of shrubs and small trees, which is called El Pejual ; no doubt because of the great abundance of the ' Pejoa,' (Gaultheria odorata,) a plant with very odoriferous leaves. The steepness of the mountain became less considerable, and we felt an indescribable pleasure in examining the plants of this region. Nowhere, perhaps, can be found collected together in so small a space of ground, productions so beautiful, and so remarkable in regard to the * I do not see what this can mean. Primroses and cowslips can't become shrubs ; nor can violets, nor daisies, nor any other of our pet meadow flowers. 238 PROSERPINA. geography of plants. At the height of a thou- sand toises, the lofty savannahs of the hills terminate in a zone of shrubs, which by their appearance, their tortuous branches, their stiff leaves, and the dimensions and beauty of their purple flowers, remind us of what is called in the Cordilleras of the Andes the vegetation of the paramos* and the punas. We find there the family of the Alpine rhododendrons, the thibaudias, the andromedas, the vacciniums, and those befarias f with resinous leaves, which we have several times compared to the rhododendron of our European Alps. " Even when nature does not produce the same species in analogous climates, either in the plains of isothermal parallels, or on table-lands the temperature of which resembles that of places nearer the poles, we still remark a striking re- semblance of appearance and physiognomy in the vegetation of the most distant countries. This phenomenon is one of the most curious in the history of organic forms. I say the history ; for in vain would reason forbid man to form hypotheses on the origin of things : he is not * ' Deserts.' Punas is not in my Spanish dictionary, and the refer- ence to a former note is wrong in my edition of Humboldt, vol. iii., p. 490. f " The Alpine rose of equinoctial America," p. 453. XII. CORA AND KRONOS. 239 the less tormented with these insoluble problems of the distribution of beings." 15. Insoluble — yes, assuredly, poor little beaten phantasms of palpitating clay that we are — and who asked us to solve it? Even this Humboldt, quiet-hearted and modest watcher of the ways of Heaven, in the real make of him, came at last to be so far puffed up by his vain science in declining years that he must needs write a Kosmos of things in the Universe, forsooth, as if he knew all about them ! when he was not able meanwhile, (and does not seem even to have desired the ability,) to put the slightest Kosmos into his own ' Personal Narrative ' ; but leaves one to gather what one wants out of its wild growth ; or rather, to wash or winnow what may be useful out of its debris, without any vestige either of reference or index ; and I must look for these fragmentary sketches of heath and grass through chapter after chapter about the races of the Indian, and religion of the Spaniard, — these also of great intrinsic value, but made useless to the general reader by interspersed experiment on the drifts of the wind and the depths of the sea. 16. But one more fragment out of a note (vol. iii., p. 494) I must give, with reference to an order of the Rhododendrons as yet wholly unknown to me. 24O PROSERPINA. " The name of vine tree, ' uvas camaronas ' (Shrimp grapes ?) is given in the Andes to plants of the genus Thibaudia on account of their large succu- lent fruit. Thus the ancient botanists give the name of Bear's vine, ' Uva Ursi,' and vine of Mount Ida, ' Vitis Idea,' to an Arbutus and Myrtillus which belong, like the Thibaudia, to the family of the Ericineae." Now, though I have one entire bookcase and half of another, and a large cabinet besides, or about fifteen feet square of books on botany beside me here, and a quantity more at Oxford, I have no means whatever, in all the heap, of finding out what a Thibaudia is like. Loudon's Cyclopaedia, the only general book I have, tells me only that it will grow well in camellia houses, that its flowers develope at Christmas, and that they are beautifully varied like a fritillary : where- upon I am very anxious to see them, and taste their fruit, and be able to tell my pupils some- thing intelligible of them, — a new order, as it seems to me, among my Oreiades. But for the present I can make no room for them, and must be content, for England and the Alps, with my single class, Myrtilla, including all the fruit- bearing and (more or less) myrtle-leaved kinds ; and Azalea for the fruitless flushing of the loftier XII. CORA AND KRONOS. 241 tribes ; taking the special name ' Aurora ' for the red and purple ones of Europe, and resigning the already accepted ' Rhodora ' to those of the Andes and Himalaya. 17. Of which also, with help of earnest Indian botanists, I hope nevertheless to add some little history to that of our own Oreiades ; — but shall set myself on the most familiar of them first, as I partly hinted in taking for the frontispiece of this volume two unchecked shoots of our com- monest heath, in their state of full lustre and decline. And now I must go out and see and think — and for the first time in my life — what becomes of all these fallen blossoms, and where my own mountain Cora hides herself in winter ; and where her sweet body is laid in its death. Think of it with me, for a moment before I go. That harvest of amethyst bells, over all Scottish and Irish and Cumberland hill and moorland ; what substance is there in it, yearly gathered out of the mountain winds, — stayed there, as if the morning and evening clouds had been caught out of them and woven into flowers ; ' Ropes of sea-sand ' — but that is child's magic merely, compared to the weaving of the Heath out of the cloud ? And once woven, how much of it is for ever worn by the Earth? What 242 PROSERPINA. weight of that transparent tissue, half crystal and half comb of honey, lies strewn every year dead under the snow? I must go and look, and can write no more to-day ; nor to-morrow neither. I must gather slowly what I see, and remember ; and meantime leaving, to be dealt with afterwards, the difficult and quite separate question of the production of wood, I will close this first volume of Proserpina with some necessary statements respecting the operations, serviceable to other creatures than themselves, in which the lives of the noblest plants are ended : honourable in this service equally, though evanescent, some, — in the passing of a breeze — or the dying of a day ; — and patient some, of storm and time, serene in fruitful sanctity, through all the uncounted ages which Man has polluted with his tears. 243 CHAPTER XIII. THE SEED AND HUSK. i . "XT OT the least sorrowful, nor least absurd ^- ^ of the confusions brought on us by unscholarly botanists, blundering into foreign languages, when they do not know how to use their own, is that which has followed on their practice of calling the seed-vessels of flowers 'egg- vessels,' * in Latin ; thus involving total loss of the power of the good old English word 'husk,' and the good old French one, 'cosse.' For all the treasuries of plants (see Chapter IV., § 17) may be best conceived, and described, generally, as con- sisting of ' seed ' and ' husk,' — for the most part two or more seeds, in a husk composed of two or more parts, as pease in their shell, pips in an orange, or kernels in a walnut ; but whatever their number, or the method of their enclosure, let the student keep clear in his mind, for the base of all study of fructification, the broad distinction * More literally, "persons to whom the care of eggs is entrusted." 17 244 PROSERPINA. between the seed, as one thing, and the husk as another: the seed, essential to the continuance of the plant's race ; and the husk, adapted, primarily, to its guard and dissemination ; but secondarily, to quite other and far more important functions. 2. For on this distinction follows another prac- tical one of great importance. A seed may serve, and many do mightily serve, for the food of man, when boiled, crushed, or otherwise industriously prepared by man himself, for his mere sustenance. But the husk of the seed is prepared in many cases for the delight of his eyes, and the pleasure of his palate, by Nature herself, and is then called a 'fruit' 3. The varieties of structure both in seed and husk, and yet more, the manner in which the one is contained, and distributed by, the other, are infinite; and in some cases the husk is apparently wanting, or takes some unrecognizable form. But in far the plurality of instances the two parts of the plant's treasury are easily distinguishable, and must be separately studied, whatever their apparent closeness of relation, or, (as in all natural things,) the equivocation sometimes taking place between the one and the other. To me, the especially curious point in this matter is that, while I find the most elaborate accounts given by botanists of XIII. THE SEED AND HUSK. 245 the stages of growth in each of these parts of the treasury, they never say of what use the guardian is to the guarded part, irrespective of its service to man. The mechanical action of the husk in con- taining and scattering the seeds, they indeed often notice and insist on ; but they do not tell us of what, if any, nutritious or fostering use the rind is to a chesnut, or an orange's pulp to its pips, or a peach's juice to its stone. 4. Putting aside this deeper question for the moment, let us make sure we understand well, and define safely, the separate parts themselves. A seed consists essentially of a store, or sack, containing substance to nourish a germ of life, which is sur- rounded by such substance, and in the process of growth is first fed by it. The germ of life itself rises into two portions, and not more than two, in the seeds of two-leaved plants; but this sym- metrical dualism must not be allowed to confuse the student's conception, of the three organically separate parts, — the tough skin of a bean, for instance; the softer contents of it which we boil to eat ; and the small germ from which the root springs when it is sown. A bean is the best type of the whole structure. An almond out of its shell, a peach-kernel, and an apple-pip are also clear and perfect, though varied types. 246 PROSERPINA. 5. The husk, or seed-vessel, is seen in perfect simplicity of type in the pod of a bean, or the globe of a poppy. There are, I believe, flowers in which it is absent or imperfect; and when it contains only one seed, it may be so small and closely united with the seed it contains, that both will be naturally thought of as one thing only. Thus, in a dandelion, the little brown grains, which may be blown away, each with its silken parachute, are every one of them a complete husk and seed together. But the majority of instances (and those of plants the most serviceable to man) in which the seed-vessel has entirely a separate structure and mechanical power, justify us in giving it the normal term 'husk,' as the most widely applicable and intelligible. 6. The change of green, hard, and tasteless vegetable substance into beautifully coloured, soft, and delicious substance, which produces what we call a fruit, is, in most cases, of the husk only; in others, of the part of the stalk which immediately sustains the seed ; and in a very few instances, not properly a change, but a distinct formation, of fruity substance between the husk and seed. Nor- mally, however, the husk, like the seed, consists always of three parts; it has an outer skin, a central substance of peculiar nature, and an inner XIII. THE SEED AND HUSK. 247 skin, which holds the seed. The main difficulty, in describing or thinking of the completely ripened product of any plant, is to discern clearly which is the inner skin of the husk, and which the outer skin of the seed. The peach is in this respect the best general type, — the woolly skin being the outer one of the husk; the part we eat, the central substance of the husk ; and the hard shell of the stone, the inner skin of the husk. The bitter kernel within is the seed. 7. In this case, and in the plum and cherry, the two parts under present examination — husk and seed — separate naturally ; the fruity part, which is the body of the husk, adhering firmly to the shell, which is its inner coat. But in the walnut and almond, the two outer parts of the husk separate from the interior one, which becomes an apparently independent 'shell.' So that when first I approached this subject I divided the general structure of a treasury into three parts — husk, shell, and kernel; and this division, when we once have mastered' the main one, will be often useful. But at first let the student keep steadily to his con- ception of the two constant parts, husk and seed, reserving the idea of shells and kernels for one group of plants only. 8. It will not be always without difficulty that 248 PROSERPINA. he maintains the distinction, when the tree pretends to have changed it. Thus, in the chesnut, the inner coat of the husk becomes brown, adheres to the seed, and seems part of it ; and we naturally call only the thick, green, prickly coat, the husk. But this is only one of the deceiving tricks of Nature, to compel our attention more closely. The real place of separation, to her mind, is between the mahogany coloured shell and the nut itself, and that more or less silky and flossy coating within the brown shell is the true lining of the entire 'husk.' The paler brown skin, following the rugosities of the nut, is the true sack or skin of the seed. Similarly in the walnut and almond. 9. But, in the apple, two new tricks are played us. First, in the brown skin of the ripe pip, we might imagine we saw the part correspondent to the mahogany skin of the chesnut, and therefore the inner coat of the husk. But it is not so. The brown skin of the pips belongs to them pro- perly, and is all their own. It is the true skin or sack of the seed. The inner coat of the husk is the smooth, white, scaly part of the core that holds them. Then, — for trick number two. We should as naturally imagine the skin of the apple, which we peel off, to be correspondent to the skin of the XIII. THE SEED AND HUSK. 249 peach; and therefore, to be the outer part of the husk. But not at all. The outer part of the husk in the apple is melted away into the fruity mass of it, and the red skin outside is the skin of its stalk, not of its seed-vessel at all ! 10. I say 'of its stalk,' — that is to say, of the part of the stalk immediately sustaining the seed, commonly called the torus, and expanding into the calyx. In the apple, this torus incorporates itself with the husk completely ; then refines its own external skin, and colours that variously and beautifully, like the true skin of the husk in the peach, while the withered leaves of the calyx remain in the ' eye ' of the apple. But in the ' hip ' of the rose, the incorpora- tion with the husk of the seed does not take place. The torus, or, — as in this flower from its peculiar form it is called, — the tube of the calyx, alone forms the frutescent part of the hip; and the complete seeds, husk and all, (the firm tri- angular husk enclosing an almond-shaped kernel,) are grouped closely in its interior cavity, while the calyx remains on the top in a large and scarcely withering star. In the nut, the calyx remains green and beautiful, forming what we call the husk of a filbert ; and again we find Nature amusing herself by trying to make us think that 250 PROSERPINA. this strict envelope, almost closing over the single seed, is the same thing to the nut that its green shell is to a walnut! 11. With still more capricious masquing, she varies and hides the structure of her ' berries.' The strawberry is a hip turned inside-out, the frutescent receptacle changed into a scarlet ball, or cone, of crystalline and delicious coral, in the outside of which the separate seeds, husk and all, are imbedded. In the raspberry and blackberry, the interior mound remains sapless ; and the rubied translucency of dulcet substance is formed round each separate seed, upon its husk ; not a part of the husk, but now an entirely indepen- dent and added portion of the plant's bodily form. 12. What is thus done for each seed, on the