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 IX. 
 
 VIOLA CANINA. 
 Fast Sketch to show Grouping of Leaves. 
 
PROSERPINA. 
 
 STUDIES OF WAYSIDE FLOWEKS, 
 
 WHILE THE AIR WAS YET PURE 
 
 AMONG THE ALPS, AND IN THE SCOTLAND AND 
 ENGLAND WEIGH MY FATHER KNEW. 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN RUSKIN, LL.D., 
 
 HONORARY STCDENT OF CHRISTCHURCH, AND HONORARY FELLOW OF CORPUS 
 CHRISTI COLLEGE, OXFORD. 
 
 VOL. II. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 
 JOHN WILEY & SONS, 
 15 ASTOR PLACE. 
 
 1886. 
 
fa 
 
 V. 2- 
 
 PROSERPINA. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 VIOLA. 
 
 1. ALTHOUGH I have not been able in the preceding 
 volume to complete, in any wise as I desired, the account 
 of the several parts and actions of plants in general, I 
 will not delay any longer our entrance on the examina- 
 tion of particular kinds, though here and there I must 
 interrupt such special study by recurring to general 
 principles, or points of wider interest. But the scope of 
 such larger inquiry will be best seen, and the use of it 
 best felt, by entering now on specific study. 
 
 I begin with the Violet, because the arrangement of 
 the group to which it belongs Cytherides is more ar- 
 bitrary than that of the rest, and calls for some immedi- 
 ate explanation. 
 
 2. I fear that my readers may expect me to write 
 something very pretty for them about violets : but my 
 time for writing prettily is long past ; and it requires 
 some watching over myself, I find, to keep me even 
 
PROSERPINA. 
 
 from writing querulously. For while, the older I grow, 
 very thankfully I recognize more and more the number 
 of pleasures granted to human eyes in this fair world, I 
 recognize also an increasing sensitiveness in my temper 
 to anything that interferes with them ; and a grievous 
 readiness to find fault always of course submissively, 
 but very articulately with whatever Nature seems to 
 me not to have managed to the best of her power ; as, 
 for extreme instance, her late arrangements of frost this 
 spring, destroying all the beauty of the wood sorrels ; 
 nor am I less inclined, looking to her as the greatest of 
 sculptors and painters, to ask, every time I see a narcis- 
 sus, why it should be wrapped up in brown paper ; and 
 every time I see a violet, what it wants with a spur ? 
 
 3. What any flower wants with a spur, is indeed the 
 simplest and hitherto to me unanswerablest form of the 
 question; nevertheless, when blossoms grow in spires, 
 and are crowded together, and have to grow partly 
 downwards, in order to win their share of light and 
 breeze, one can see some reason for the effort of the 
 petals to expand upwards and backwards also. But that 
 a violet, who has her little stalk to herself, and might 
 grow straight up, if she pleased, should be pleased to do 
 nothing of the sort, but quite gratuitously bend her 
 stalk down at the top, and fasten herself to it by her 
 waist, as it were, this is so much more like a girl of the 
 period's fancy than a violet's, that I never gather one 
 separately but with renewed astonishment at it. 
 
I. VIOLA. 3 
 
 4. One reason indeed there is, which I never thought 
 of until this moment ! a piece of stupidity which I can 
 only pardon myself in, because, as it has chanced, I have 
 studied violets most in gardens, not in their wild haunts, 
 partly thinking their Athenian honour was as a garden 
 flower; and partly being always Ted away from them, 
 among the hills, by flowers which I could see nowhere 
 else. With all excuse I can furbish up, however, it is 
 shameful that the truth of the matter never struck me 
 before, or at least this bit of the truth as follows. 
 
 5. The Greeks, and Milton, alike speak of violets as 
 growing in meadows tor dales). But the Greeks did so 
 because they could not fancy any delight except in 
 meadows; and Milton, because he wanted a rhyme to 
 nightingale and, after all, was London bred. But 
 Viola's beloved knew where violets grew in Illyria, and 
 grow everywhere else also, when they can, on a bank, 
 facing the south. 
 
 Just as distinctly as the daisy and buttercup are 
 'no flowers, the violet is a bank flower, and would 
 fain grow always on a steep slope, towards the sun. 
 And it is so poised on its stem that it shows, when grow- 
 ing on a slope, the full space and opening of its flower, 
 not at all, in any strain of modesty, hiding ifa-tf* 
 though it may easily be, by grass or mossy stone, 'half 
 hidden,' but, to the full, showing itself, and intending 
 to be lovely and luminous, as fragrant, to the uttermost 
 of its soft power. 
 
PROSERPINA. 
 
 Nor merely in its oblique setting on the stalk, but in 
 the reversion of its two upper petals, the flower shows 
 this purpose of being fully seen. (For a flower that 
 does hide itself, take a lily of the valley, or the bell of 
 a grape hyacinth, or a cyclamen.) But respecting this 
 matter of petal-reversion, we must now farther state two 
 or three general principles. 
 
 6. A perfect or pure flower, as a rose, oxalis, or cam- 
 panula, is always composed of an unbroken whorl, or 
 corolla, in the form of a disk, cup, bell, or, if it draw 
 together again at the lips, a narrow-necked vase. This 
 cup, bell, or vase, is divided into similar petals, (or seg- 
 ments, which are petals carefully joined,) varying in num- 
 ber from three to eight, and enclosed by a calyx whose 
 sepals are symmetrical also. 
 
 An imperfect, or, as I am inclined rather to call it, an 
 6 injured' flower, is one in which some of the petals have 
 inferior office and position, and are either degraded, for 
 the benefit of others, or expanded and honoured at the 
 cost of others. 
 
 Of this process, the first and simplest condition is the 
 reversal of the upper petals and elongation of the lower 
 ones, in blossoms set on the side of a clustered stalk. 
 "When the change is simply and directly dependent on 
 their position in the cluster, as in Aurora Regina,* modi- 
 fying every bell just in proportion as it declines from 
 the perfected central one, some of the loveliest groups of 
 *Vol. i., p.212, note. 
 
I. VIOLA. 5 
 
 form are produced which can be seen in any inferior 
 nrirunisin : but when the irregularity becomes fixed, and 
 the newer is always to the same extent distorted, what- 
 ever its position in the cluster, the plant is to be rightly 
 thought of as reduced to a lower rank in creation. 
 
 7. It is to be observed, also, that these inferior forms 
 of flower have always the appearance of being produced 
 by .-nine kind of mischief blight, bite, or ill-breeding; 
 they never suggest the idea of improving themselves, now, 
 into anything better ; one is only afraid of their tearing 
 or puffing themselves into something worse. Xay, even 
 the quite natural and simple conditions of inferior vege- 
 table do not in the least suggest, to the uribitten or un- 
 blighted human intellect, the notion of development into 
 anything other than their like : one does not expect a 
 mushroom to translate itself into a pineapple, nor a 
 betony to moralize itself into a lily, nor a snapdragon to 
 soften himself into a lilac. 
 
 8. It is very possible, indeed, that the recent phrenzy 
 fur the investigation of digestive and reproductive oper- 
 ations in plants may by tin's time have furnished the 
 microscopic malice of botanists with providentially dis- 
 gusting reasons, or demoniacally nasty necessities, for 
 every possible spur, spike, jag, sting, rent, blotch, flaw, 
 freckle, filth, or venom, which can be detected in the 
 construction, or distilled from the dissolution, of vegeta- 
 ble organism. But with these obscene processes and 
 prurient apparitions the gentle and happy scholar of 
 
6 PROSERPINA. 
 
 flowers has nothing whatever to do. I am amazed and 
 saddened, more than I can care to say, by finding how 
 much that is abominable may be discovered by an ill- 
 taught curiosity, in the purest things that earth is allowed 
 to produce for us; perhaps if we were less reprobate in 
 our own ways, the grass which is our type might con- 
 duct itself better, even though it has no hope but of 
 being cast into the oven ; in the meantime, healthy 
 human eyes and thoughts are to be set on the lovely 
 laws of its growth and habitation, and not on the mean 
 mysteries of its birth. 
 
 9. I relieve, therefore, our presently inquiring souls 
 from any farther care as to the reason for a violet's spur, 
 or for the extremely ugly arrangements of its stamens 
 and style, invisible unless by vexatious and vicious peep- 
 ing. You are to think of a violet only in its green 
 leaves, and purple or golden petals ; you are to know 
 the varieties of form in both, proper to common species ; 
 and in what kind of places they all most fondly live, and 
 most deeply glow. 
 
 " And the recreation of the minde which is taken 
 heereby cannot be but verie good and honest, for they 
 admonish and stir up a man to that which is comely and 
 honest. For flowers, through their beautie, varietie of 
 colour, and exquisite forme, do bring to a liberall and 
 gentle manly minde the remembrance of honestie, come- 
 liness, and all kinds of vertues. For it would be an un- 
 seemely and filthie thing, as a certain wise man saith, for 
 
I. VIOLA. 7 
 
 him that cloth looke upon and handle faire and beautiful 
 thinirs. and who frequenteth and is conversant in faire 
 and beautiful places, to have his mind not faire, but 
 filthie and deformed/' 
 
 10. Thus Gerarde, in the close of his introductory 
 notice of the violet, speaking of things, (honesty, come- 
 liness, and the like,) scarcely now recognized as desirable 
 in the realm of England; but having previously ob- 
 served that violets are useful for the making of garlands 
 for the head, and posies to smell to ; in which last func- 
 tion I observe they are still pleasing to the British pub- 
 lic : and I found the children here, only the other day, 
 munching a confection of candied violet leaves. "What 
 pleasure the flower can still give us, uncandied, and un- 
 bound, but in its own place and life, I will try to trace 
 through some of its constant laws. 
 
 11. And first, let us be clear that the native colour of 
 the violet -is violet ; and that the white and yellow kinds, 
 though pretty in their place and way, are not to be 
 thought of in generally meditating the flower's quality 
 or power. A white violet is to black ones what a black 
 man is to white ones; and the yellow varieties are, I 
 believe, properly pansies, and belong also to wild dis- 
 tricts for the most part; but the true violet, which I 
 have just now called 4 black,' with Gerarde, " the blacke 
 or purple violet, hath a great prerogative above others," 
 and all the nobler species pf the pansy itself are of full 
 purple, inclining, however, in the ordinary wild violet to 
 
8 PROSERPINA. 
 
 blue. In the 'Laws of Fesole,' chap, vii., 20, 21, I 
 have made this dark pansy the representative of purple 
 pure ; the viola odorata, of the link between that full 
 purple and blue ; and the heath-blossom of the link be- 
 tween that full purple and red. The reader will do well, 
 as much as may be possible to him, to associate his study 
 of botany, as indeed all other studies of visible things, 
 with that of painting : but he must remember that he 
 cannot know what violet colour really is, unless he watch 
 the flower in its early growth. It becomes dim in age, 
 and dark when it is gathered at least, when it is tied in 
 bunches ; but I am under the impression that the colour 
 actually deadens also, at all events, no other single 
 flower of the same quiet colour lights up the ground 
 near it as a violet will. The bright hounds-tongue looks 
 merely like a spot of bright paint ; but a young violet 
 glows like painted glass. 
 
 12. "Which, when you have once well noticed, the two 
 lines of Milton and Shakspeare which seem opposed, 
 will both become clear to you. The said lines are 
 dragged from hand to hand along their pages of pilfered 
 quotations by the hack botanists, who probably never 
 saw them, nor anything else, in Shakspeare or Milton in 
 their lives, till even in reading them where they rightly 
 come, you can scarcely recover their fresh meaning : but 
 none of the botanists ever think of asking why Perdita 
 calls the violet ' dim,' and Milton ' glowing.' 
 
 Perdita, indeed, calls it dim, at that moment, in think- 
 
7Y> 
 
 C4, 
 
 I. VIOLA. 
 
 ing of her own love, and the hidden passion of it, un- 
 speakable ; nor is Milton without some purpose of using 
 it as an emblem of love, mourning, but, in both cases, 
 the subdued and quiet hue of the flower as an actual tint 
 of colour, and the strange force and life of it as a part 
 of light, are felt to their uttermost. 
 
 And observe, also, that both of the poets contrast the 
 violet, in its softness, with the intense marking of the 
 pansy. Milton makes the opposition directly 
 
 " the pansy, freaked with jet, 
 The glowing violet." 
 
 Shakspeare shows yet stronger sense of the difference, in 
 the ''purple with Love's wound" of the pansy, while 
 the violet is sweet with Love's hidden life, and sweeter 
 than the lids of Juno's eyes. 
 
 Whereupon, we may perhaps consider with ourselves 
 a little, what the difference is between a violet and a 
 pansy \ 
 
 13. Is, I say. and was, and is to come, in spite of 
 florists, who try to make pansies round, instead of pen- 
 tagonal ; and of the wise classifying people, who say that 
 violets and pansies are the same thing and that neither 
 of them are of much interest ! As, for instance, Dr. 
 Linclley in his ' Ladies' Botany.' 
 
 Violets sweet Violets, and Pansies, or Heartsease, 
 represent a small family, with the structure of which 
 you should be familiar ; more, however, for the sake of 
 
10 PROSERPINA. 
 
 its singularity than for its extent or importance, for the 
 family is a very small one, and there are but few species 
 belonging to it in which much interest is taken. As 
 the parts of the Heartsease are larger than those of the 
 Yiolet, let us select the former in preference for the 
 subject of our study." Whereupon we plunge instantly 
 into the usual account of things with horns and tails. 
 " The stamens are five in number two of them, which 
 are in front of the others, are hidden within the horn of 
 the front petal," etc., etc., etc. (Note in passing, by the 
 ' horn of the front ' petal he means the i spur of the bot- 
 tom' one, which indeed does stand in front of the rest, 
 but if therefore it is to be called the front petal 
 which is the back one ?) You may find in the next par- 
 agraph description of a " singular conformation," and 
 the interesting conclusion that " no one has yet discov- 
 ered for what purpose this singular conformation was 
 provided." But you will not, in the entire article, find 
 /lie least attempt to tell you the difference between a 
 violet and a pansy ! except in one statement and that 
 false ! a The sweet violet will have no rival among 
 flowers, if we merely seek for delicate fragrance ; but 
 her sister, the heartsease, who is destitute of all sweet- 
 ness, far surpasses her in rich dresses and gaudy \ ! ! 
 colours." The heartsease is not without sweetness. 
 There are sweet pansies scented, and dog pansies un- 
 scented as there are sweet violets scented, and clog 
 violets unscented.. What is the real difference ? 
 
I. VIOLA. 11 
 
 14. I turn to another scientific gentleman more sci- 
 entific in form indeed, Mr. Grindon, and find, for an- 
 other interesting phenomenon in the violet, that it some- 
 times produces flowers without any petals! and in the 
 pansy, that " the flowers turn towards the sun, and when 
 many are open at once, present a droll appearance, look- 
 ing like a number of faces all on the ' qui vive.' 5: But 
 nothing of the difference between them, except some- 
 thing about ' stipules,' of which "it is important to ob- 
 serve that the leaves should be taken from the middle of 
 the stem those above and below being variable." 
 
 I observe, however, that Mr. Grindon has arranged 
 his violets under the letter A, and his pansies under the 
 letter B, and that something may be really made out of 
 him, with an hour or two's work. I am content, how- 
 ever, at present, with his simplifying assurance that of 
 violet and pansy together, " six species grow wild in 
 Britain or, as some believe, only four while the ana- 
 lysts run the number up to fifteen." 
 
 15. Xext I try London's Cyclopaedia, which, through 
 all its TOO pages, is equally silent on the business ; and 
 next, Mr. Baxter's 'British Flowering Plants,' in the 
 index of which I find neither Pansy nor Heartsease, and 
 only the ' Calathian ' Yiolet, (where on earth is Cala- 
 thia ?) which proves, on turning it up, to be a Gentian. 
 
 10. At last, I take my Figuier, (but what should I do 
 if I. only knew English ?) and find this much of clue to 
 the matter : 
 
12 PKOSERPISTA. 
 
 " Qu'est ce que c'est que la Pensee ? Cette jolie plante 
 appartient aussi ou genre Yiola, mais a un section de ce 
 genre. En eifet, dans les Pensees, les petales superieurs 
 et lateraux sont diriges en haut, Pinferieur seul est 
 dirige en bas : et de plus, le stigmate est urceole, glo- 
 buleux." 
 
 And farther, this general description of the whole 
 violet tribe, which I translate, that we may have its full 
 value : 
 
 " The violet is a plant without a stem (tige), (see 
 vol. i., p. 154,) whose height does not surpass one or 
 two decimetres. Its leaves, radical, or carried on stolons, 
 (vol. i., p. 158,) are sharp, or oval, crenulate, or heart- 
 shape. Its stipules are oval-acuminate, or lanceolate. 
 Its flowers, of sweet scent, of a dark violet or a reddish 
 blue, are carried each on a slender peduncle, which bends 
 down at .the summit. Such is, for the botanist, the 
 Violet, of which the poets would give assuredly another 
 description." 
 
 17. Perhaps ; or even the painters ! or even an ordi- 
 nary unbotanical human creature ! I must set about my 
 business, at any rate, in my own way, now, as I best can, 
 looking first at things themselves, and then putting this 
 and that together, out of these botanical persons, which 
 they can't put together out of themselves. And first, I 
 go down into my kitchen garden, where the path to the 
 lake has a border of pansies on both sides all the way 
 down, with clusters of narcissus behind them. And 
 
I. VIOLA. 13 
 
 pulling up a handful of pansies by the roots, I find them 
 "without stems," indeed, if a stem means a wooden 
 thing ; but I should say, for a low-growing flower, quiet 
 lankily and disagreeably stalky ! And, thinking over 
 what I remember about wild pansies, I find an impres- 
 sion on my mind of their being rather more stalky, al- 
 ways, than is quite graceful ; and, for all their fine flow- 
 ers, having rather a weedy and littery look, and getting 
 into places where they have no business. See, again, 
 vol. i., chap, vi., 5. 
 
 18. And now, going up into my flower and fruit gar- 
 den, I find (June 2nd, 1881, half-past six, morning,) 
 among the wild saxifrages, which are allowed to grow 
 wherever they like, and the rock strawberries, and Fran- 
 cescas, which are coaxed to grow wherever there is a bit 
 of rough ground for them, a bunch or two of pale pan- 
 sies, or violets, I don't know well which, by the flower ; 
 but the entire company of them has a ragged, jagged, 
 un purpose-like look ; extremely, I should say, demor- 
 alizing to all the little plants in their neighbourhood : and 
 on gathering a flower, I find it is a nasty big thing, all 
 of a feeble blue, and with two things like horns, or 
 thorns, sticking out where its ears would be, if the 
 pansy's frequently monkey face were underneath them. 
 Which I find to be two of the leaves of its calyx 'out of 
 place,' and, at all events, for their part, therefore, weedy, 
 and insolent. 
 
 19. I perceive, farther, that this disorderly flower is 
 
14 PROSERPINA. 
 
 lifted on a lanky, awkward, springless, and yet stiff 
 flower-stalk ; which is not round, as a flower-stalk ought 
 to be, (vol. i., p. 155,) but obstinately square, and fluted, 
 with projecting edges, like a pillar run thin out of an 
 iron-foundry for a cheap railway station. I perceive 
 also that it has set on it, just before turning down to 
 carry the flower, two little jaggy and indefinable leaves, 
 their colour a little more violet than the blossom. 
 
 These, and such undeveloping leaves, wherever they 
 occur, are called ' bracts ' by botanists, a good word, from 
 the Latin ' bractea,' meaning a piece of metal plate, so 
 thin as to crackle. They seem always a little stiff, like 
 bad parchment, born to come to nothing a sort of in- 
 finitesimal fairy -lawyer's deed. They ought to have been 
 in my index at p. 255, under the head of leaves, and are 
 frequent in flower structure, never, as far as one can 
 see, of the smallest use. They are constant, however, in 
 the flower-stalk of the whole violet tribe. 
 
 20. I perceive, farther, that this lanky flower-stalk, 
 bending a little in a crabbed, broken way, like an obsti- 
 nate person tired, pushes itself up out of a still more 
 stubborn, nondescript, hollow angular, dogseared gas- 
 pipe of a stalk, with a section something like this, 
 
 but no bigger than \f with a quantity cf 
 
 ill-made and ill-hemmed leaves on it, of no describable 
 leaf -cloth or texture, not cressic, (though the thing does 
 
I. VIOLA. 15 
 
 altogether look a good deal like a quite uneatable old 
 watercress) ; not salviau, for there's no look of warmth 
 or comfort in them ; not cauline, for there's no juice in 
 them ; not dryad, for there's no strength in them, nor 
 apparent use : they seem only there, as far as I can make 
 out, to spoil the flower, and take the good out of my 
 garden bed. Nobody in the world could draw them, 
 they are so mixed up together, and crumpled and hacked 
 about, as if some ill-natured child had snipped them with 
 blunt scissors, and an ill-natured cow chewed them a 
 little afterwards and left them, proved for too tough or 
 too bitter. 
 
 21. Having now sufficiently observed, it seems to me, 
 this incongruous plant, I proceed to ask myself, over it, 
 M. Figuier's question, 4 Qu'est-ce c'est qu'un Pensee?' 
 Is this a violet or a pansy or a bad imitation of both ? 
 
 Whereupon I try if it has any scent : and to my much 
 surprise, find it has a full and soft one which I suppose 
 is what my gardener keeps it for! According to Dr. 
 Lindley, then, it must be a violet! But according to M. 
 Figuier, let me see, do its middle petals bend up, or 
 down? 
 
 I think I'll go and ask the gardener what he calls it. 
 
 22. My gardener, on appeal to him, tells me it is the 
 6 Yiola Cornuta.' but that he does not know himself if it 
 is violet or pansy. I take my London again, and find 
 there were fifty-three species of violets, known in his 
 days, of which, as it chances, Cornuta is exactly the last. 
 
16 PROSERPINA. 
 
 i Horned violet ' : I said the green things were like 
 horns! but what is one to say of, or to do to, scientific 
 people, who first call the spur of the violet's petal, horn, 
 and then its calyx points, horns, and never define a 
 c horn ' all the while ! 
 
 Yiola Cornuta, however, let it be ; for the name does 
 mean something, and is not false Latin. But whether 
 violet or pansy, I must look farther to find out. 
 
 23. I take the Flora Danica, in which I at least am 
 sure of finding whatever is done at all, done as well as 
 honesty and care can ; and look what species of violets it 
 gives. 
 
 Nine, in the first ten volumes of it; four in their 
 modern sequel (that I know of, I have had no time to 
 examine the last issues). Namely, in alphabetical order, 
 with their present Latin, or tentative Latin, names; and 
 in plain English, the senses intended by the hapless scien- 
 tific people, in such their tentative Latin : 
 
 (1) Viola Arvensis. Field (Violet) ... No. 1748 
 
 (2) " Biflora. Two-flowered ... 46 
 
 (3) " Canina. Dog 1453 
 
 (3s) " Canina. Yar. Multicaulis (many- 
 
 stemmed), a very singular sort of 
 
 violet if it were so ! Its real dif- 
 ference from our dog-violet is in 
 being pale blue, and having a 
 golden centre 2646 
 
I. VIOLA. 17 
 
 (4) Viola Hirta. Hairy 618 
 
 (5) " Mirabilis. Marvellous .... 1045 
 
 (6) " Montana. Mountain 1329 
 
 (7) " Odorata. Odorous 309 
 
 (8) " Palustris. Marshy 83 
 
 (9) " Tricolor. Three-coloured ... 623 
 (9s) " Tricolor. Yar. Arenaria, Sandy 
 
 Three-coloured 2647 
 
 (10) " Elatior. Taller 68 
 
 (11) " Epipsila. (Heaven knows what : it is 
 
 Greek, not Latin, and looks as if 
 it meant something between a 
 bishop and a short letter e) . . 2405 
 
 I next run down this list, noting what names we can 
 keep, and what we can't ; and what aren't worth keep- 
 ing, if we could : passing over the varieties, however, 
 for the present, wholly. 
 
 (1) Arvensis. Field-violet. Good. 
 
 (2) Binora. A good epithet, but in false Latin. It is 
 
 to be our Yiola aurea, golden pansy. 
 
 (3) Canina. Dog. Not pretty, but intelligible, and 
 
 by common use now classical. Must stay. 
 
 (4) Hirta. Late Latin slang for hirsuta, and always 
 
 used of nasty places or nasty people ; it shall not 
 stay. The species shall be our Yiola Seclusa, 
 Monk's violet meaning the kind of monk who 
 
 leads a rough life like Elijah's, or the Baptist's, 
 2 
 
18 PROSERPINA. 
 
 or Esau's in another kind. This violet is one of 
 the loveliest that grows. 
 
 (5) Mirabilis. Stays so ; marvellous enough, truly : not 
 
 more so than all violets ; but I am very glad to 
 hear of scientific people capable of admiring any- 
 - thing. 
 
 (6) Montana. Stays so. 
 
 (7) Odorata. Not distinctive; nearly classical, how- 
 
 ever. It is to be our Viola Kegina, else I should 
 not have altered it. 
 
 (8) Palustris. Stays so. 
 
 (9) Tricolor. True, but intolerable. The flower is the 
 
 queen of the true pansies : to be our Viola Psyche. 
 
 (10) Elatior. Only a variety of our already accepted 
 
 Cornuta, 
 
 (11) The last is, I believe, also only a variety of Palus- 
 
 tris. Its leaves, I am informed in the text, are 
 either " pubescent-reticulate- venose-subreniform," 
 or " lato-cordate-repando-crenate ;" and its stipules 
 are " ovate-acuminate-iim brio-denticulate." I do 
 not wish to pursue the inquiry farther. 
 
 24. These ten species will include, noting here and 
 there a local variety, all the forms which are familiar to 
 us in Northern Europe, except only two ; these, as it 
 singularly chances, being the Viola Alpium, noblest of 
 all the wild pansies in the world, so far as I have seen or 
 heard of them, of which, consequently, I find no pic- 
 
I. VIOLA. 19 
 
 ture, nor notice, in any botanical work whatsoever ; and 
 the other, the rock-violet of our own Yorkshire hills. 
 
 "We have therefore, ourselves, finally then, twelve fol- 
 lowing species to study. I give them now all in their 
 accepted names and proper order, the reasons for occa- 
 sional difference between the Latin and English name 
 will be presently given. 
 
 (1) Yiola Regina. Queen violet. 
 
 (2) " Psyche. Ophelia's pansy. 
 
 (3) " Alpium. Freneli's pansy. 
 () u Aurea. Golden violet. 
 
 (5) u Montana. Mountain Yiolet. 
 
 (6) u Mirabilis. Marvellous violet. 
 
 (7) " Arvensis. Field violet. 
 
 (8) " Palustris. Marsh violet. 
 
 (9) " Seclusa. Monk's violet. 
 
 (10) " Canina. Dog violet. 
 
 (11) " Cornuta. Cow violet. 
 
 (12) Rupestris. Crag violet. 
 
 25. ^Ye will try, presently, what is to be found out of 
 useful, or pretty, concerning all these twelve violets; 
 but must first find out how we are to know which are 
 violets indeed, and which, pansies. 
 
 Yesterday, after finishing my list, I went out again to 
 examine Yiola Cornuta a little closer, and pulled up a 
 full grip of it by the roots, and put it in water in a wash- 
 hand basin, which it filled like a truss of green hay. 
 
20 PROSERPINA. 
 
 Pulling out two or three separate plants, I find each 
 to consist mainly of a jointed stalk of a kind I have not 
 yet described, roughly, some two feet long altogether ; 
 (accurately, one 1 ft. 10J in. ; another, 1 ft. 10 in. ; an- 
 other, 1 ft. 9 in. but all these measures taken without 
 straightening, and therefore about an inch short of the 
 truth), and divided into seven or eight lengths by clumsy 
 joints where the mangled leafage is knotted on it ; but 
 broken a little out of the way at each joint, like a rheu- 
 matic elbow that won't come straight, or bend farther 
 and which is the most curious point of all in it it is 
 thickest in the middle, like a viper, and gets quite thin 
 to the root and thin towards the flower ; also the lengths 
 between the joints are longest in the middle : here I 
 give them in inches, from the root upwards, in a stalk 
 taken at random. 
 
 1st (nearest root) 
 
 Of 
 
 2nd ... 
 
 Of 
 
 3rd 
 
 1* 
 
 4th . 
 
 If 
 
 5th ... 
 
 3 
 
 6th ... 
 
 4 
 
 7th ... 
 
 3i 
 
 8th 
 
 3 
 
 9th 
 
 2* 
 
 10th 
 
 n 
 
 
 1 ft. 9f in. 
 
 But the thickness of the joints and length of terminal 
 flower stalk bring the total to two feet and about an inch 
 
I. VIOLA. 21 
 
 over. I dare not pull it straight, or should break it, but 
 it overlaps my two-foot rule considerably, and there are 
 two inches besides of root, which are merely under- 
 ground stem, very thin and wretched, as the rest of it is 
 merely root above ground, very thick and bloated. (I 
 begin actually to be a little awed at it, as I should be by 
 a green snake only the snake would be prettier.) The 
 flowers also, I perceive, have not their two horns regu- 
 larlv set in, but the five spiky calyx-ends stick out be- 
 tween the petals sometimes three, sometimes four, it 
 iniiy be all five up and down and produce variously 
 fanged of forked effects, feebly ophidian or diabolic. 
 On the whole, a plant entirely mismanaging itself, 
 reprehensible and awkward, with taints of worse than 
 awkwardness ; and clearly, no true k species,' but only a 
 link.* And it really is, as you will find presently, a 
 link in two directions ; it is half violet, half pansy, a 
 ' cur' among the Dogs, and a thoughtless thing among 
 the thoughtful. And being so, it is also a link between 
 the entire violet tribe and the Runners pease, straw- 
 berries, and the like, whose glory is in their speed ; but 
 a violet has no business whatever to run anywhere, 
 being appointed to stay where it was born, in extremely 
 contented (if not secluded) places. u Half-hidden from 
 the eye?'' no; but desiring attention, or extension, or 
 corpulence, or connection with anybody else's family, 
 still I 
 
 * See ' Deucalion/ vol. ii., chap, i., p. 12, 18. 
 
22 
 
 PROSERPINA. 
 
 26. And if, at the time you read this, you can run out 
 and gather a true violet, and its leaf, you will find that 
 the flower grows from the very ground, out of a cl.ister 
 of heart-shaped leaves, becoming here a little rounder, 
 there a little sharper, but on the whole heart-shaped, and 
 that is the proper and essential form of the violet leaf. 
 You will find also that the flower has five petals ; and 
 being held down by the bent stalk, two of them bend 
 back and up, as if resisting it ; two expand at the sides ; 
 
 and one, the principal, grows downwards, 
 with its attached spur behind. So that the 
 front view of the flower must be some modifi- 
 cation of this typical arrangement, Fig, M, 
 (for middle form). Now the statement above 
 quoted from Figuier, 16, means, if he had 
 been able to express himself, that the two lat- 
 eral petals in the violet are directed down- 
 wards, Fig. II. A, and in the pansy upwards, 
 Fig. II. c. And that, in the main, is true, 
 and to be fixed well and clearly in your mind. 
 But in the real orders, one flower passes into 
 c the other through all kinds of intermediate 
 IG ' ' positions of petal, and the plurality of species 
 are of the middle type, Fig. II. B.* 
 
 27. Next, if you will gather a real pansy leaf, you 
 will find it not heart-shape in the least, but sharp oval 
 
 * I am ashamed to give so rude outlines; but every moment now 
 is valuabl e to me: careful outline of a dog-violet is given in Plate X. 
 
X. 
 VIOLA CANINA. 
 
 Structural Details. 
 
I. VIOLA. 23 
 
 or spear- shape, with two deep cloven lateral flakes at its 
 springing from the stalk, which, in ordinary aspect, give 
 the plant the haggled and draggled look I have been 
 vilifying it for. These, and such as these, "leaflets at 
 the base of other leaves" (Balfour's Glossary), are called 
 by botanists 'stipules.' I have not allowed the word 
 yet, and am doubtful of allowing it, because it entirely 
 confuses the student's sense of the Latin 'stipula' (see 
 above, vol. i., chap, viii., 27) doubly and trebly im- 
 portant in its connection with 'stipulor,' not noticed in 
 that paragraph, but readable in your large Johnson ; we 
 shall have more to say of it when we come to ' straw ' 
 itself. 
 
 28. In the meantime, one may think of these things 
 as stipulations for leaves, not fulfilled, or 'stumps' or 
 ' sumphs ' of leaves ! But I think I can do better for 
 them. We have already got the idea of crested leaves, 
 (see vol. i., plate); now, on each side of a knight's crest, 
 from earliest Etruscan times down to those of the Scalas, 
 the fashion of armour held, among the nations who 
 wished to make themselves terrible in aspect, of putting 
 cut plates or ; bracts ' of metal, like dragons' wings, on 
 each side of the crest. I believe the custom never be- 
 came Xorman or English ; it is essentially Greek, Etrus- 
 can, or Italian, the Gorman and Dane always wearing 
 a practical cone (see the coins of Canute), and the Frank 
 or English knights the severely plain beavered helmet ; 
 the Black Prince's at Canterbury, and Henry Y.'s at 
 
PROSERPINA. 
 
 Westminster, are kept hitherto by the great fates for us 
 to see. But the Southern knights constantly wore these 
 lateral dragon's wings; and if I can find their special 
 name, it may perhaps be substituted with advantage for 
 1 stipule'; but I have not wit enough by me just now to 
 invent a term. 
 
 29. Whatever we call them, the things themselves are. 
 throughout all the species of violets, developed in the 
 running and weedy varieties, and much subdued in the 
 beautiful ones; and generally the pansies have them 
 large, with spear-shaped central leaves ; and the violets 
 small, with heart-shaped leaves, for more effective deco- 
 ration of the ground. I now note the characters of each 
 species in their above given order. 
 
 30. I. YIOLA KEGINA. Queen Yiolet. Sweet Yiolet. 
 4 Viola Odorata,' L., Flora Danica, and Sowerby. The 
 latter draws it with golden centre and white base of 
 lower petal ; the Flora Danica, all purple. It is some- 
 times altogether white. It is seen most perfectly for 
 setting off its colour, in group with primrose, and most 
 luxuriantly, so far as I know, in hollows of the Savoy 
 limestones, associated with the pervenche, which em- 
 broiders and illumines them all over. I believe it is the 
 earliest of its race, sometimes called 'Martia,' March 
 violet. In Greece and South Italy even a flower of the 
 winter. 
 
 " The Spring is come, the violet's gene, 
 The first-born child of the early sun. 
 
I. YIOLA. 25 
 
 With us, she is but a winter's flower; 
 
 The snow on the hills cannot blast her bower, 
 
 And she lifts up her dewy eye of blue 
 
 To the youngest sky of the selfsame hue, 
 
 And when the Spring comes, with her host 
 Of flowers, that flower beloved the most 
 Shrinks from the crowd that may confuse 
 Her heavenly odour, and virgin hues. 
 
 Pluck the others, but still remember 
 Their herald out of dim December, 
 The morning star of all the flowers, 
 The pledge of daylight's lengthened hours, 
 Nor, midst the roses, e'er forget 
 The virgin, virgin violet." * 
 
 3. It is the queen, not only of the violet tribe, but of 
 all low-growing flowers, in sweetness of scent variously 
 applicable and serviceable in domestic economy : the 
 scent of the lily of the valley seerns less capable of pres- 
 ervation or use. 
 
 But, respecting these perpetual beneficences and be- 
 nignities of the sacred, as opposed to the malignant, 
 herbs, whose poisonous power is for the most part re- 
 
 * A careless bit of Byron's, (the last song but one in the ' Deformed 
 Transformed'); but Byron's most careless work is better, by its in- 
 nate energy, than other people's most laboured. I suppress, in some 
 doubts about my ' digamma,' notes on the Greek violet and the Ion 
 of Euripides; which the reader will perhaps be good enough to 
 fancy a serious loss to him, and supply for himself . 
 
26 PROSERPINA. 
 
 strained in them, during their life, to their juices or dust, 
 and not allowed sensibly to pollute the air, I should like 
 the scholar to re-read pp. 251, 252 of vol. i., and then to 
 consider with himself what a grotesquely warped and 
 gnarled thing the modern scientific mind is, which fierce- 
 ly busies itself in venomous chemistries that blast every 
 leaf from the forests ten miles round ; and yet cannot 
 tell us, nor even think of telling us, nor does even one 
 of its pupils think of asking it all the while, how a violet 
 throws off her perfume ! far less, whether it might not 
 be more wholesome to ' treat ' the air which men are to 
 breathe in masses, by administration of vale-lilies and 
 violets, instead of charcoal and sulphur ! 
 
 The closing sentence of the first volume just now re- 
 ferred to p. 254 should also be re-read ; it was the 
 sum of a chapter I had in hand at that time on the Sub- 
 stances and Essences of Plants which never got fin- 
 ished; and in trying to put it into small space, it 
 has become obscure : the terms " logically inexplicable" 
 meaning that no words or process of comparison will de- 
 fine scents, nor do any traceable modes of sequence or 
 relation connect them ; each is an independent power, 
 and gives a separate impression to the senses. Above 
 all, there is no logic of pleasure, nor any assignable 
 reason for the difference, between loathsome and de- 
 lightful scent, which makes the fungus foul and the 
 vervain sacred : but one practical conclusion I (who am 
 in all final ways the most prosaic and practical of human 
 
I. VIOLA. 27 
 
 creatures) do very solemnly beg my readers to meditate ; 
 namely, that although not recognized by actual offensive- 
 ne?s of scent, there is no space of neglected land which 
 is not in some way modifying the atmosphere of all the 
 world, it may be, beneficently, as heath and pine, it 
 may be, malignantly, as Pontine marsh or Brazilian 
 jungle ; but, in one way or another, for good and evil 
 constantly, by day and night, the various powers of life 
 and death in the plants of the desert are poured into the 
 air, as vials of continual angels : and that no words, no 
 thoughts can measure, nor imagination follow, the possi- 
 ble change for good which energetic and tender care of 
 the wild herbs of the field and trees of the wood might 
 bring, in time, to the bodily pleasure and mental power 
 of Man. 
 
 32. II. VIOLA PSYCHE. Ophelia's Pansy. 
 
 The wild heart's-ease of Europe ; its proper colour an 
 exquisitely clear purple in the upper petals, gradated 
 into deep blue in the lower ones ; the centre, gold. Not 
 larger than a violet, but perfectly formed, and firmly set 
 in all its petals. Able to live in the driest ground ; 
 beautiful in the coast sand-hills of Cumberland, follow- 
 ing the wild geranium and burnet rose : and distin- 
 guished thus by its power of life, in waste and dry 
 places, from the violet, which needs kindly earth and 
 shelter. 
 
 Quite one of the most lovely things that Heaven has 
 made, and only degraded and distorted by any human 
 
28 PROSERPINA. 
 
 interference ; the swollen varieties of it produced by 
 cultivation being all gross in outline and coarse in colour 
 by comparison. 
 
 It is badly drawn even in the ' Flora Danica,' No. 623, 
 considered there apparently as a species escaped from 
 gardens ; the description of it being as follows : 
 
 "Yiola tricolor hortensis repens, flore purpureo et 
 cceruleo, C. B. P., 199." (I don't know what C. B. P. 
 means.) " Passim, juxta villas." 
 
 " Yiola tricolor,, caule triquetro diffuso, foliis oblongis 
 incisis, stipulis pinnatifidis," Linn. Systema Naturae, 185. 
 
 33. " Near the country farms " does the Danish 
 botanist mean? the more luxuriant weedy character 
 probably acquired by it only in such neighbourhood ; 
 and, I suppose, various confusion and degeneration pos- 
 sible to it beyond other plants when once it leaves its 
 wild home. It is given by Sibthorpe from the Trojan 
 Olympus, with an exquisitely delicate leaf ; the flower de- 
 scribed as " triste et pallide violaceus," but coloured in 
 his plate full purple ; and as he does not say whether he 
 went up Olympus to gather it himself, or only saw it 
 brought down by the assistant whose lovely drawings 
 are yet at Oxford, I take leave to doubt his epithets. 
 That this should be the only Yiolet described in a f Flora 
 Grseca' extending to ten folio volumes, is a fact in 
 modern scientific history which I must leave the Pro- 
 fessor of Botany and the Dean of Christ Church to 
 explain. 
 

 I. VIOLA. 29 
 
 34. The English varieties seem often to be yellow in 
 the lower petals, (see Sowerby's plate, 1287 of the old 
 edition) , crossed, I imagine, with Yiola Aurea, (but see 
 under Yiola Eupestris, No. 12) ; the names, also, vary- 
 ing between tricolor and bicolor with no note any- 
 where of the three colours, or two colours, intended ! 
 
 The old English names are many. ' Love in idleness,' 
 making Lysander, as Titania, much wandering in mind, 
 and for a time mere c Kits run the street ' (or run the 
 wood?) "Call me to you" (Gerarde, ch. 299, Sowerby, 
 No. 178), with 4 Herb Trinity,' from its three colours, 
 blue, purple, and gold, variously blended in different 
 countries $ ' Three faces under a hood ' describes the 
 English variety only. Said to be the ancestress of all 
 the florists' pansies, but this I much doubt, the next 
 following species being far nearer the forms most chiefly 
 sought for. 
 
 35. III. YIOLA ALPIXA. ' Freneli's Pansy ' my own 
 name for it, from GotthelPs Freneli, in 'Ulric the 
 Farmer'; the entirely pure and noble type of the Ber- 
 nese maid, wife, and mother. 
 
 The pansy of the Wengern Alp in specialty, and of 
 the higher, but still rich, Alpine pastures. Full dark- 
 purple ; at least arf inch across the expanded petals ; I 
 believe, the 'Mater Yiolarum' of Gerarde; and true 
 black violet of Yirgil, remaining in Italian ' Yiola Mam- 
 mola ' (Gerarde, ch. 298)." 
 
 36. IY. YIOLA AUEEA. Golden Yiolet. Biflora usu- 
 
30 PROSERPINA. 
 
 ally ; but its brilliant yellow is a much more definite 
 characteristic ; and needs insisting on, because there is a 
 'Viola lutea' which is not yellow at all; named so by 
 the garden florists. My Viola aurea is the Rock-violet 
 of the Alps ; one of the bravest, brightest, and dearest 
 of little flowers. The following notes upon it, with its 
 summer companions, a little corrected from my diary of 
 1877, will enough characterize it. 
 
 " June 1th. The cultivated meadows now grow only 
 dandelions in frightful quantity too ; but, for wild 
 ones, primula, bell gentian, golden pansy, and anemone, 
 Primula farinosa in mass, the pansy pointing and vivify- 
 ing in a petulant sweet way, and the bell gentian here 
 and there deepening all, as if indeed the sound of a 
 deep bell among lighter music. 
 
 " Counted in order, I find the effectively constant 
 flowers are eight ;* namely, 
 
 " 1. The golden anemone, with richly cut large leaf ; 
 primrose colour, and in masses like primrose, studded 
 through them with bell gentian, and dark purple orchis. 
 
 " 2. The dark purple orchis, with bell gentian in equal 
 quantity, say six of each in square yard, broken by 
 sparklings of the white orchis and the white grass-flower ; 
 the richest piece of colour I ever saw} touched with gold 
 by the geum. 
 
 * Nine ; I see that I missed count of P. farinosa, the most abund- 
 ant of all. 
 
I. YIOLA. 31 
 
 " 3 arid 4. These will be white orchis and the grass 
 flower.* 
 
 " 5. Geum everywhere, in deep, but pure, gold, like 
 pieces of Greek mosaic. 
 
 " 6. Soldanella, in the lower meadows, delicate, but 
 not here in masses. 
 
 " 7. Primula Alpina, divine in the rock clefts, and on 
 the ledges changing the grey to purple, set in the drip- 
 ping caves with 
 
 " 8. Viola ('pertinax pert) ; I want a Latin word for 
 various studies failures all to express its saucy little 
 stuck-up way, and exquisitely trim peltate leaf. I never 
 saw such a lovely perspective line as the pure front leaf 
 profile. Impossible also to get the least of the spirit of 
 its lovely dark brown fibre markings. Intensely golden 
 these dark fibres, just browning the petal a little between 
 them." 
 
 And again in the defile of Gondo, I find " Yiola (sax- 
 atilis ?) name yet wanted ; in the most delicate studding 
 of its round leaves, like a small fern more than violet, 
 and bright sparkle of small flowers in the dark dripping 
 hollows. Assuredly delights in shade and distilling 
 moisture of rocks." 
 
 * "A feeble little quatref oil growing one on the stem, like a Par- 
 nassia. and looking like a Parnassia that had dropped a leaf. I think it 
 drops one of its own four, mostly, and lives as three-fourths of itself, 
 for most of its time. Stamens pale gold. Root-leaves, three or four, 
 grass-like ; growing among the moist moss chiefly." 
 
32 PROSERPINA. 
 
 I found afterwards a much larger yellow pansy on the 
 Yorkshire high limestones ; with vigorously black crow- 
 foot marking on the lateral petals. 
 
 37. Y. YIOLA MONTANA. Mountain Yiolet. 
 
 Flora Danica, 1329. Linnaeus, No. 13, " Caulibus 
 erectis, foliis cordato-lanceolatis, floribus serioribus apeta- 
 lis," i.e. 9 on erect stems, with leaves long heart-shape, 
 and its later flowers without petals not a word said of 
 its earlier flowers which have got those unimportant ap- 
 pendages ! In the plate of the Flora it is a very perfect 
 transitional form between violet and pansy, with beauti- 
 fully firm and well-curved leaves, but the colour of blos- 
 som very pale. " In subalpinis Norvegiae passim," all 
 that we are told of it, means I suppose, in the lower 
 Alpine pastures of Norway ; in the Flora Suecica, p. 
 306, habitat in Lapponica, juxta Alpes. 
 
 38. YI. YIOLA MIRABILIS. Flora Danica, 1045. A 
 small and exquisitely formed flower in the balanced 
 cinquefoil intermediate between violet and pansy, but 
 with large and superbly curved and pointed leaves. It 
 is a mountain violet, but belonging rather to the moun- 
 tain woods than meadows. "In sylvaticis in Toten, 
 Norvegiae." 
 
 London, 3056, " Broad-leaved : Germany." 
 Linnaeus, Flora Suecica, 789, says that the flowers of 
 it which have perfect corolla and full scent often bear 
 no seed, but that the later 'cauline' blossoms, without 
 petals, are fertile. " Caulini vero apetali fertiles sunt, 
 et seriores. Habitat passim Upsaliae." 
 
I. VIOLA. 33 
 
 I find this, and a plurality of other species, indicated 
 by Linnaeus as having triangular stalks, " caule triquetro," 
 meaning, I suppose, the kind sketched in Figure 1 above. 
 
 39. Til. TIOLA AKVEXSIS. Field Tiolet. Flora Dan- 
 ica, 1748. A coarse running weed; nearly like Tiola 
 Cornuta, but feebly lilac and yellow in colour. In dry 
 fields, and with corn. 
 
 Flora Suecica, 791 ; under titles of Tiola 'tricolor' 
 and 'bicolor arvensis,' and Herba Trinitatis. Habitat 
 ubique in sterilibus arvis : " Planta vix datur in qua 
 evidentius perspicitur generationis opus, quam in hujus 
 cavo apertoque stigmate." 
 
 It is quite undeterminable, among present botanical 
 instructors, how far this plant is only a rampant and 
 over-indulged condition of the true pansy (Tiola Psyche) ; 
 but my own scholars are to remember that the true 
 pansy is full purple and blue with golden centre ; and 
 that the disorderly field varieties of it, if indeed not 
 scientifically distinguishable, are entirely separate Iroin 
 the wild flower by their scattered form and faded or 
 altered colour. I follow the Flora Danica in giving 
 them as a distinct species. 
 
 40. Till. TIOLA PALUSTEIS. Marsh Tiolet. Flora 
 Danica, 83. As there drawn, the most finished and deli- 
 eate in form of all the violet tribe ; warm white, streaked 
 with red ; and as pure in outline as an oxalis, both in 
 flower and leaf : it is like a violet imitating oxalis and 
 anagallis. 
 
 3 
 
34 PROSEKPIXA. 
 
 In the Flora Suecica, the petal-markings are said to be 
 black ; in c Yiola lactea ' a connected species, (Sowerby, 
 45,) purple. Sowerby's plate of it under the name 
 ' palustris ' is pale purple veined with darker ; and the 
 spur is said to be ' honey-bearing,' which is the first men- 
 tion I find of honey in the violet. The habitat given, 
 sandy and turfy heaths. It is said to grow plentifully 
 near Croydon. 
 
 Probably, therefore, a violet belonging to the chalk, 
 on which nearly all herbs that grow wild from the 
 grass to the bluebell are singularly sweet and pure. I 
 hope some of my botanical scholars will take up this 
 question of the effect of different rocks on vegetation, 
 not so much in bearing different species of plants, as 
 different characters of each species.* 
 
 41. IX. VIOLA SECLUSA. Monk's Violet. "Hirta," 
 Flora Danica, 618, " In fruticetis raro." A true wood 
 violet, full but dim in purple. Sowerby, 894, makes it 
 paler. The leaves very pure and severe in the Danish 
 one ; longer in the English. " Clothed on both sides 
 with short, dense, hoary hairs." 
 
 Also belongs to chalk or limestone only (Sowerby), 
 
 X. VIOLA CAJSTNA. Dog Violet. I have taken it for 
 analysis in my two plates, because its grace of form is 
 too much despised, and we owe much more of the beauty 
 
 * The great work of Lecoq, ' Geographic Botanique,' is of priceless 
 value ; but treats all on too vast a scale for our purposes. 
 
I. VIOLA. 35 
 
 of spring to it, in English mountain ground, than to the 
 Regina. 
 
 XI. YIOLA COBXUTA. Cow Yiolet. Enough described 
 already. 
 
 XII. YIOLA KUPESTRIS. Crag Yiolet. On the high 
 limestone moors of Yorkshire, perhaps only an English 
 form of Yiola Aurea, but so much larger, and so differ- 
 ent in habit growing on dry breezy downs, instead of 
 in dripping caves that I allow it, for the present, sep- 
 arate name and number.* 
 
 42. { For the present,' I say all this work in * Proser- 
 pina' being merely tentative, much to be modified by 
 future students, and therefore quite different from that 
 of * Deucalion,' which is authoritative as far as it reaches, 
 and will stand out like a quartz dyke, as the sandy specu- 
 lations of modern gossiping geologists get washed away. 
 
 But in the meantime, I must again solemnly warn my 
 girl-readers against all study of floral genesis and diges- 
 tion. How far flowers invite, or require, flies to inter- 
 fere in their family affairs which of them are carnivo- 
 rous and what forms of pestilence or infection are most 
 favourable to some vegetable and animal growths, let 
 them leave the people to settle who like, as Toinette says 
 
 * It is, I believe, Sowerby's Viola Lutea, 721 of the old edition, thero 
 painted with purple upper petals; but he says in the text, "Petals 
 either all yellow, or the two uppermost are of a blue purple, the rest 
 yellow with a blue tinge : very often the whole are purple." 
 
36 PROSERPINA. 
 
 of the Doctor in the ' Malade Imaginaire ' " y mettre Je 
 nez." I observe a paper in the last c Contemporary Re 
 view,' announcing for a discovery patent to all mankind 
 that the colours of flowers were made " to attract in- 
 sects" ! * They will next hear that the rose was made 
 for the canker, and the body of man for the worm. 
 
 43. What the colours of flowers, or of birds, or of 
 precious stones, or of the sea and air, and the blue moun- 
 tains, and the evening and the morning, and the clouds 
 of Heaven, were given for they only know who can 
 see them and can feel, and who pray that the sight and 
 the love of them may be prolonged, where cheeks will 
 not fade, nor sunsets die. 
 
 44. And now, to close, let me give you some fuller 
 account of the reasons for the naming of the order to 
 which the violet belongs, ' Cytherides.' 
 
 You see that the Uranides, are, as far as I could so 
 gather them, of the pure blue of the sky ; but the Cyther- 
 ides of altered blue ; the first, Viola, typically purple ; 
 the second, Veronica, pale blue with a peculiar light ; 
 the third, Ginlietta, deep blue, passing strangely into a 
 subdued green before and after the full life of the 
 flower. 
 
 All these three flowers have great strangenesses in 
 them, and weaknesses ; the Veronica most wonderful in 
 
 * Did the wretch never hear bees in a lime tree then, or ever see 
 one on a star gentian ? 
 
I. VIOLA. 37 
 
 its connection with the poisonous tribe of the foxgloves ; 
 the Giulietta, alone among flowers in the action of the 
 shielding leaves; and the Viola, grotesque and inexpli- 
 cable in its hidden structure, but the most sacred of all 
 flowers to earthly and daily Love, both in its scent and 
 glow. 
 
 Now, therefore, let us look completely for the meaning 
 of the two leading lines, 
 
 " Sweeter than the lids of Juno^s eyes, 
 Or Cytherea's breath." 
 
 45. Since, in my present writings, I hope to bring into 
 one focus the pieces of study fragmentarily given during 
 past life, I may refer my readers to the first chapter of 
 the * Queen of the Air ' for the explanation of the way in 
 which all great myths are founded, partly on physical, 
 partly on moral fact, so that it is not possible for per- 
 sons who neither know the aspect of nature, nor the con- 
 stitution of the human soul, to understand a word of 
 them. Naming the Greek gods, therefore, you have first 
 to think of the physical power they represent. When 
 Horace calls Vulcan < Avidus,' he thinks of him as the 
 power of Fire ; when he speaks of Jupiter's red right 
 hand, he thinks of him as the power of rain with lightning ; 
 and when Homer speaks of Juno's dark eyes, you have 
 to remember that she is the softer form of the rain power, 
 and to think of the fringes of the rain-cloud across the 
 light of the horizon. Gradually the idea becomes per- 
 
38 PROSERPINA. 
 
 sonal and human in the " Dove's eyes within thy locks," * 
 and " Dove's eyes by the river of waters" of the Song of 
 Solomon. 
 
 46. " Or Cytherea's breath," the two thoughts of soft- 
 est glance, and softest kiss, being thus together associated 
 with the flower: but note especially that the Island of 
 Cythera was dedicated to Venus because it was the chief, 
 if not the only Greek island, in whicli the purple fishery 
 of Tyre was established ; and in our own minds should 
 be marked not orfly as the most southern fragment of 
 true Greece, but the virtual continuation of the chain of 
 mountains which separate the Spartan from the Argive 
 territories, and are the natural home of the brightest 
 Spartan and Argive beauty which is symbolized in Helen. 
 
 47. And, lastly, in accepting for the order this name 
 of Cytherides, you are to remember the names of Viola 
 and Giulietta, its two limiting families, as those of Shak- 
 speare's two most loving maids the two who love sim- 
 ply, and to the death : as distinguished from the greater 
 natures in whom earthly Love has its due part, and no 
 more ; and farther still from the greatest, in whom the 
 earthly love is quiescent, or subdued, beneath the thoughts 
 of duty and immortality. 
 
 It may be well quickly to mark for you the levels of 
 
 * Septuagint, "the eyes of doves out of thy silence." Vulgate,, 
 " the eyes of doves, besides that which is hidden in them." Meaning 
 the dim look of love, beyond all others in sweetness. 
 
I. VIOLA. 39 
 
 loving temper in Shakspeare's maids and wives, from tlie 
 greatest to the least. 
 
 iS. 1. Isabel. All earthly love, and the possibilities of 
 it, held in absolute subjection to the laws of God, and the 
 judgments of His will. She is Shakspeare's only 'Saint/ 
 Queen Catherine, whom you might next think of, is only 
 an ordinary woman of trained religious temper: her 
 maid of honour gives Wolsey a more Christian epitaph. 
 
 2. Cordelia. The earthly love consisting in diffused 
 compassion of the universal spirit ; not in any conquer- 
 ing, personally fixed, feeling. 
 
 ' Mine enemy's dog, 
 
 Though he had bit me, should have stood that night 
 Against my fire." 
 
 These lines are spoken in her hour of openest direct ex- 
 pression ; and are all Cordelia. 
 
 Shakspeare clearly does not mean her to have been 
 supremely beautiful in person ; it is only her true lover 
 who calls her i fair ' and i f aire&t ' and even that, I 
 believe, partly in courtesy, after having the instant be- 
 fore offered her to his subordinate duke ; and it is only 
 his scorn of her which makes France fully care for her. 
 
 " Gods, Gods, 'tis strange that from their cold neglect 
 My love should kindle to inflamed respect !" 
 
 Had she been entirely beautiful, he would have honoured 
 her as a lover should, even before he saw her despised ; 
 
40 PROSERPINA. 
 
 nor would she ever have been so despised or by her 
 father, mis understood. Shakspeare himself does not pre- 
 tend to know where her girl-heart was, but I should 
 like to hear how a great actress would say the " Peace be 
 with Burgundy !" 
 
 3. Portia. The maidenly passion now becoming great, 
 and chiefly divine in its humility, is still held absolutely 
 subordinate to duty; no thought of disobedience to her 
 dead father's intention is entertained for an instant, though 
 the temptation is marked as passing, for that instant, be- 
 fore her crystal strength. Instantly, in her own peace, 
 she thinks chiefly of her lover's; she is a perfect Chris- 
 tian wife in a moment, coming to her husband with the 
 gift of perfect Peace, 
 
 " Never shall you lie by Portia's side 
 With an unquiet soul." 
 
 She is highest in intellect of all Shakspeare's women, 
 and this is the root of her modesty ; her i unlettered girl' 
 is like Newton's simile of the child on the sea-shore. 
 Her perfect wit and stern judgment are never disturbed 
 for an instant by her happiness : and the final key to her 
 character is given in her silent and slow return from 
 Venice, where she stops at every wayside shrine to pray. 
 
 4. Hermione. Fortitude and Justice personified, with 
 unwearying affection. She is Penelope, tried by her hus- 
 band's fault as well as error. 
 
 5. Virgilia. Perfect type of wife and mother, but 
 
I. VIOLA. 41 
 
 without definiteness of character, nor quite strength of 
 intellect enough entirely to hold her husband's heart. 
 Else, she had saved him: he would have left Rome in his 
 wrath but not her. Therefore, it is his mother only 
 v. ho bends him : but she cannot save. 
 
 G. Imogen. The ideal of grace and gentleness ; but 
 weak ; enduring too mildly, and forgiving too easily. 
 But the piece is rather a pantomime than play, and it is 
 impossible to judge of the feelings of St. Columba, when 
 she must leave the stage in half a minute after mistaking 
 the headless clown for headless Arlecchino. 
 
 7. Desdemona, Ophelia, Rosalind. They are under 
 different conditions from all the rest, in having entirely 
 heroic and faultless persons to love. I can't class them, 
 therefore, fate is too strong, and leaves them no free 
 will. 
 
 8. Perdita, Miranda. Rather mythic visions of maiden 
 beauty than mere girls. 
 
 9. Viola and Juliet. Love the ruling power in the en- 
 tire character : wholly virginal and pure, but quite earth- 
 ly, and recognizing no other life than his own. Viola is, 
 however, far the noblest. Juliet will die unless Romeo 
 loves her: u If he be wed, the grave is like to be my wed- 
 ding bed ;" but Viola is ready to die for the happiness 
 of the man who does not love her ; faithfully doing his 
 messages to her rival, whom she examines strictly for his 
 sake. It is not in envy that she says, u Excellently done, 
 if God did all." The key to her character is given in 
 
42 PROSERPINA. 
 
 the least selfish of all lover's songs, the one to which the 
 Duke bids her listen : 
 
 " Mark it, Cesario, it is old and plain, 
 The spinsters and the knitters in the sun, 
 And the free maids, that weave tJieir thread with bones, 
 Do use to chaunt it." 
 
 (They, the unconscious Fates, weaving the fair vanity of 
 life with death) ; and the burden of it is 
 
 " My part of Death, no one so true 
 Did share it." 
 
 Therefore she says, in the great first scene, u Was not 
 this love indeed ?" and in the less heeded closing one, 
 her heart then happy with the knitters in the sun, 
 
 " And all those sayings will I over-swear, 
 And all those swearings keep as true in soul 
 As doth that orbed continent the Fire 
 That severs day from night." 
 
 Or, at least, did once sever day from night, and perhaps 
 does still in Illyria. Old England must seek new images 
 for her loves from gas and electric sparks, not to say 
 furnace fire. 
 
 I am obliged, by press of other work, to set down these 
 notes in cruel shortness : and many a reader may be dis- 
 posed to question utterly the standard by which the 
 measurement is made. It will not be found, on reference 
 
I. VIOLA. 43 
 
 to my other books, that they encourage young ladies to 
 go into convents ; or undervalue the dignity of wives and 
 mothers. But, as surely as the sun does sever day from 
 night, it will be found always that the noblest and love- 
 liest women are dutiful and religious by continual nature ; 
 and their passions are trained to obey them ; like their 
 dogs. Homer, indeed, loves Helen with all his heart, 
 and restores her, after all her naughtiness^ to the queen- 
 ship of her household ; but he never thinks of her as 
 Penelope's equal, or Iphigenia's. Practically, in daily 
 life, one often sees married women as good as saints ; but 
 rarely, I think, unless they have a good deal to bear from 
 their husbands. Sometimes also, no doubt, the husbands 
 have some trouble in managing St. Cecilia or St. Eliza- 
 beth ; of which questions I shall be obliged to speak 
 more seriously in another place : content, at present, if 
 English maids know better, by Proserpina's help, what 
 Shakspeare meant by the dim, and Milton by the glowing, 
 violet. 
 
CHAPTEE II. 
 
 PINGUICULA. 
 
 (Written in early June, 1881.) 
 
 1. ON the rocks of my little stream, where it runs, or 
 leaps, through the moorland, the common Pinguicula is 
 now in its perfectest beauty ; and it is one of the off- 
 shoots of the violet tribe which I have to place in the 
 minor collateral groups of Yiola very soon, and must not 
 put off looking at it till next year. 
 
 There are three varieties given in Sowerby : 1. Yul- 
 garis, 2. Greater-flowered, and 3. Lusitanica, white, for 
 the most part, pink, or ' carnea,' sometimes : but the 
 proper colour of the family is violet, and the perfect 
 form of the plant is the 'vulgar' one. The larger- 
 flowered variety is feebler in colour, and ruder in form : 
 the white Spanish one, however, is very lovely, as far as 
 I can judge from Sowerby's (old Sowerby's) pretty draw- 
 ing. 
 
 The ' frequent' one (I shall usually thus translate ' vul- 
 ^aris '), is not by any means so ' frequent ' as the Queen 
 violet, being a true wild-country, and mostly Alpine, 
 plant ; and there is also a real ' Pinguicula Alpina,' 
 
II. PINGUICULA. 45 
 
 which we have not in England, who might be the Re- 
 gina, if the group were large enough to be reigned over : 
 but it is better not to affect Royalty among these con- 
 fused, intermediate, or dependent families. 
 
 2. In all the varieties of Pinguicula, each blossom has 
 one stalk only, growing from the ground ; and you may 
 pull all the leaves away from the base of it, and keep 
 the flower only, with its bunch of short fibrous roots, 
 half an inch long ; looking as if bitten at the ends. 
 Two flowers, characteristically, three and four very 
 often, spring from the same root, in places where it 
 grows luxuriantly ; and luxuriant growth means that 
 clusters of some twenty or thirty stars may be seen on 
 the surface of a square yard of boggy ground, quite to 
 its mind; but its real glory is in harder life, in the cran- 
 nies of well- wetted rock. 
 
 3. What I have called ' stars ' are irregular clusters of 
 approximately, or tentatively, five aloeine ground leaves, 
 of very pale green, they may be six or seven, or more, 
 but always run into a rudely pentagonal arrangement, 
 essentially first trine, with two succeeding above. 
 Taken as a whole the plant is really a main link between 
 violets and Droseras ; but the flower has much more 
 violet than Drosera in the make of it, spurred, and^tv?- 
 petaled* and held down by the top of its bending stalk 
 
 * When I have the chance, and the time, to submit the proofs of 
 ' Proserpina ' to friends who know more of Botany than I, or have 
 
46 PROSERPINA. 
 
 as a violet is ; only its upper two petals are not reverted 
 the calyx, of a dark soppy green, holding them down, 
 with its three front sepals set exactly like a strong tri- 
 dent, its two backward sepals clasping the spur. There 
 
 kindness enough to ascertain debateable things for me, I mean in 
 future to do so, using the letter A to signify Arnicas, generally; 
 with acknowledgment by name, when it is permitted, of especial 
 help or correction. Note first of this kind: I find here on this word, 
 ' five-petaled,' as applied to Pinguicula, " Qy. two-lipped? it is mono- 
 petalous, and mouosepalous, the calyx and corolla being each all in 
 one piece." 
 
 Yes ; and I am glad to have the observation inserted. But my 
 term, ' five petaled,' must stand. For the question with me is always 
 first, not how the petals are connected, but how many they are. 
 Also I have accepted the term petal but never the word lip as ap- 
 plied to flowers. The generic term ' Labiatae ' is cancelled in ' Pro- 
 serpina,' ' Vestal es' being substituted; and these flowers, when Iconic 
 to examine them, arc to be described, not as divided into two lips, 
 but into hood, apron, and side-pockets. Farther, the depth to which 
 either calyx or corolla is divided, and the firmness with which the 
 petals are attached to the torus, may, indeed, often be an important 
 part of the plant's description, but ought not to be elements in its 
 definition. Three petaled and three-sepal ed, four-petaled and four- 
 sepaled, five-petaled and five-sepal ed, etc., etc., are essential with 
 me, primal elements of definition ; next, whether resolute or stellar 
 in their connection; next, whether round or pointed, etc. Fancy, 
 for instance, the fatality to a rose of pointing its petals, and to a lily, 
 of rounding them! But how deep cut, or how hard holding, is 
 quite a minor question. 
 
 Farther, that all plants are petaled and sepaled, and never mere 
 cups in saucers, is a great fact, not to be dwelt on in a note. 
 
II. PINGUK*ULA. 47 
 
 are often six sepals, four to the front, but the normal 
 number is five. Tearing away the calyx, I find the 
 flower to have been held by it as a lion might hold his 
 prey by the loins if he missed its throat ; the blue petals 
 being really campannlate, and the flower best described 
 as a dark bluebell, seized and crushed almost flat by its 
 own calyx in a rage. Pulling away now also the upper 
 petals, I find that what are in the violet the lateral and 
 well-ordered fringes, are here thrown mainly on the 
 lower (largest) petal near its origin, and opposite the 
 point of the seizure by the calyx, spreading from this 
 centre over the surface of the lower petals, partly like an 
 irregular shower of fine Venetian glass broken, partly 
 like the wild flung Medusa like embroidery of the white 
 Lucia.* 
 
 4. The calyx is of a dark soppy green, I said; like 
 that of sugary preserved citron ; the root leaves are of 
 green just as soppy, but pale and yellowish, as if they 
 were half decayed ; the edges curled up and, as it were, 
 water-shri veiled, as one's fingers shrivel if kept too long 
 in water. And the whole plant looks as if it had been a 
 violet unjustly banished to a bog, and obliged to live 
 there not for its own sins, but for some Emperor 
 Pansy's, far away in the garden, in a partly boggish, 
 
 * Our ' Lucia Nivea,' ' Blanche Lucy; ' in present botany, Bog 
 bean! having no connection whatever with any manner of bean, but 
 only a slight resemblance to bean-fcar^ in its own lower ones. Com- 
 pare Ch. IV. 11. 
 
48 PROSERPINA. 
 
 partly hoggish manner, drenched and desolate ; and with 
 something of demoniac temper got into its calyx, so that 
 it quarrels with, and bites the corolla ; something of 
 gluttonous and greasy habit got into its leaves; a dis- 
 comfortable sensuality, even in its desolation. Perhaps 
 a penguin -ish life would be truer of it than a piggish, 
 the nest of it being indeed on the rock, or morassy rock- 
 investiture, like a sea-bird's on her rock ledge. 
 
 5. I have hunted through seven treatises on Botany, 
 namely, London's Encyclopaedia, Balfour, Grindon, Oli- 
 ver, Baxter of Oxford, Lindley ( c Ladies' Botany '), and 
 Figuier, without being able to find the meaning of ; Len- 
 tibulariacese,' to which tribe the Pinguicula is said by 
 them all (except Figuier) to belong. It may perhaps be 
 in Sowerby :* but these above-named treatises are pre- 
 cisely of the kind with which the ordinary scholar must 
 be content : and in all of them he has to learn this long, 
 worse than useless, word, under which he is betrayed 
 into classing together two orders naturally quite distinct, 
 the Butterworts and the Bladderworts. 
 
 Whatever the name may mean it is bad Latin. 
 There is such a word as Lenticularis there is no Lenti- 
 bularis ; and it must positively trouble us no longer.f 
 
 * It is not. (Resolute negative from A., unsparing of time for me; 
 and what a state of things it all signifies !) 
 
 f With the following three notes, ' A ' must become a definitely and 
 gratefully interpreted letter. I am indebted for the first, conclusive 
 
II. PINGUICULA. 49 
 
 The Butterworts are a perfectly distinct group 
 whether small or large, always recognizable at a glance. 
 Their proper Latin name will be Pinguicnla, (plural 
 Pinguiculse,) their English, Bog- Violet, or, more fa- 
 miliarly, Butter wort; and their French, as at present, 
 Grassette. 
 
 in itself, but variously supported and confirmed by the two following, 
 to K. J. Mann, Esq., M.D., long ago a pupil of Dr. Linclley's, and 
 now on the council of Whitelands College, Chelsea: for the second, 
 to Mr. Thomas Moore, F.L.S., the kind Keeper of the Botanic Gar- 
 den at Chelsea; for the third, which will be farther on useful to us, 
 to Miss Kemm, the botanical lecturer at Whitelands. 
 
 (1) There is no explanation of Lentibulariacese in Lindley's ' Vege- 
 table Kingdom.' He was not great in that line. The term is, how- 
 ever, taken from Lenticula, the lentil, in allusion to the lentil-shaped 
 air-bladders of the typical genus Utricularia. 
 
 The change of the c into b may possibly have been made only 
 from some euphonic fancy of the contriver of the name, who, I 
 think, was Rich. 
 
 But I somewhat incline myself to think that the tibia, a pipe or 
 flute, may have had something to do with it. The tibia may possibly 
 have been diminished into a little pipe by a stretch of licence, and 
 have become tibula: [but tibulus is a kind of pine tree in Pliny]; 
 when Len tibula would be the lens or lentil-shaped pipe or bladder. 
 I give you this only for what it is worth. The lenticula, as a deriva- 
 tion, is reliable and has authority. 
 
 Lenticula, a lentil, a freckly eruption; Zenttcularis, lentil-shaped; 
 so the nat. ord. ought to be (if this be right) lenticulariacecs. 
 
 (2) BOTANIC GARDENS, CHELSEA, Feb. 14, 1882. 
 Lentibularia is an old generic name of Tournefort's, which has 
 
 been superseded by utricularia, but, oddly enough, has been retained 
 4 
 
50 PROSERPINA. 
 
 The families to be remembered will be only five, 
 namely, 
 
 1. Pinguicula Major, the largest of the group. As 
 bog plants, Ireland may rightly claim the noblest of 
 them, which certainly grow there luxuriantly, and not (I 
 believe) with us. Their colour is, however, more broken 
 and less characteristic than that of the following 
 species. 
 
 2. Pinguicula Yiolacea: Violet- coloured Butterwort, 
 (instead of ' vulgaris,') the common English and Swiss 
 kind above noticed. 
 
 3. Pinguicula Alpina : Alpine Butterwort, white and 
 much smaller than either of the first two families ; the 
 
 in the name of the order lentibularew ; but it probably comes from 
 lenticula, which signifies the little root bladders, somewhat resem- 
 bling lentils. 
 
 (3) ' Manual of Scientific Terms/ Stormonth, p. 234. 
 Lenlibulariacece, neuter, plural. 
 
 (Lenticula, the shape of a lentil; from lens, a lentil.) The But- 
 terwort family, an order of plants so named from the lenticu- 
 lar shape of the air-bladders on the branches of utricularia, 
 one of the genera. (But observe that the Butterworts have 
 nothing of the sort, any of them. R.) 
 Loudon. " Floaters." 
 
 Lindley. " Sometimes with whoiied vesicles." 
 In Nuttall's Standard (?) Pronouncing Dictionary, it is given, 
 Lenticular ece, a nat. ord. of marsh plants, which thrive in water 
 or marshes. 
 
II. PIXGUICULA. 51 
 
 spur especially small, according to D. 453. Much rarer, 
 as well as smaller, than the other varieties in Southern 
 Europe. "In Britain, known only upon the moors of 
 Rosehaugh, Ross-shire, where the progress of cultivation 
 seems likely soon to efface it." (Grindon.) 
 
 4. Pingnicula Pallida : Pale Butterwort. From Sow- 
 erhy's drawing, (135, vol. iii.,) it would appear to be the 
 most delicate and lovely of all the group. The leaves, 
 " like those of other species, but rather more delicate 
 and pellucid, reticulated with red veins, and much in- 
 volute in the margin. Tube of the corolla, yellow, 
 streaked with red, (the streaks like those of a pansy) ; 
 the petals, pale violet. It much resembles Yillosa, (our 
 Minima, ~No. 5,) in many particulars, the stem being 
 hairy, and in the lower part the hairs tipped with a 
 viscid fluid, like a sundew. But the Yillosa has a 
 slender sharp spur; and in this the spur is blunt and 
 thick at the end." (Since the hairy stem is not peculiar 
 to Villosa, I take for her, instead, the epithet Minima, 
 which is really definitive.) 
 
 The pale one is commonly called ' Lusitanica,' but I 
 find no direct notice of its Portuguese habitation. Sow- 
 erlrrs plant came from Blandford, Dorsetshire ; and 
 Grindon says it is frequent in Ireland, abundant in Ar- 
 ran. and extends on the western side of the British island 
 from Cornwall to Cape Wrath. My epithet, Pallida, is 
 secure, and simple, wherever the plant is found. 
 
PROSERPINA. 
 
 5. Pinguieula Minima : Least Butterwort; in D. 1021 
 called Villosa, the scape of it being hairy. I have not 
 
 yet got rid of this absurd word ' scape,' 
 meaning, in botanist's Latin, the flower-stalk 
 of a flower growing out of a cluster of leaves 
 on the ground. It is a bad corruption of 
 'sceptre,' and especially false and absurd, be- 
 cause a true sceptre is necessarily branched.* 
 In s Proserpina,' when it is spoken of dis- 
 tinctively, it is called 'virgula' (see vol. i., 
 pp. 146, 147, 151, 152). The hairs on the vir- 
 gula are in this instance so minute, that even 
 with a lens I cannot see them in the Danish 
 plate : of which Fig. 3 is a rough transla- 
 tion into woodcut, to show the grace and 
 FIG. III. mien of the little thing. The trine leaf 
 cluster is characteristic, and the folding up of the leaf 
 edges. The flower, in the Danish plate, full purple, 
 Abundant in east of Finmar'k (Finland?), but always 
 growing in marsh moss, (Sphagnum palustre). 
 
 6. I call it ' Minima ' only, as the least of the five here 
 named ; without putting forward any claim for it to be 
 the smallest pinguicula that ever was or will be. In 
 such sense only, the epithets minima or maxima are to, 
 be understood when used in 'Proserpina': and so also, 
 
 More accurately, shows the pruned roots of branches, 
 
 rojurj}' kv ope&fa XeX.ontRy. The pruning is the mythic 
 expression of the subduing of passion by rectorial law. 
 
II. PINGUICULA. 53 
 
 every statement and every principle is only to be under- 
 stood as true or tenable, respecting the plants which the 
 writer has seen, and which he is sure that the reader 
 can easily see : liable to modification to any extent by 
 wider experience ; but better first learned securely with- 
 in a narrow fence, and afterwards trained or fructified, 
 along more complex trellises. 
 
 7. And indeed my readers at least, my newly found 
 readers must note always that the only power which 
 I claim for any of my books, is that of being right and 
 true as far as they reach. None of them pretend to be 
 Kosmoses ; none to be systems of Positivism or Nega- 
 tivism, on which the earth is in future to swing instead 
 of on its old worn-out poles ; none of them to be works 
 of genius ; none of them to be, more than all true work 
 must be, pious ; and none to be, beyond the power of 
 common people's eyes,* ears, and noses, < aesthetic.' 
 They tell you that the world is so big, and can't be made 
 bigger that you yourself are also so big, and can't be 
 made bigger, however you puff or bloat yourself ; but 
 that, on modern mental nourishment, you may very 
 easily be made smaller. They tell you that two and two 
 are four, that ginger is hot in the mouth, that roses are 
 red, and smuts black. Not themselves assuming to be 
 
 * The bitter sorrow with which I first recognized the extreme rarity 
 of finely-developed organic sight is expressed enough in the lecture 
 on the Mystery of Life, added in the large edition of ' Sesame and 
 Lilies.' 
 
54 PROSERPINA. 
 
 pious, they yet assure you that there is such a thing as 
 piety in the world, and that it is wiser than impiety ; and 
 not themselves pretending to be works of genius, they 
 yet assure you that there is such a thing as genius in the 
 world, and that it is meant for the light and delight of 
 the world. 
 
 8. Into these repetitions of remarks on my work, 
 often made before, I have been led by an unlucky author 
 who has just sent me his book, advising me that it is 
 "neither critical nor sentimental" (he had better have 
 said in plain English " without either judgment or feel- 
 ing"), and in which nearly the first sentence I read is 
 " Solomon with all his acuteness was not wise enough to 
 . . . etc., etc., etc." (' give the Jews the British consti- 
 tution,' I believe the man means.) He is not a whit 
 more conceited than Mr. Herbert Spencer, or Mr. Gold- 
 win Smith, or Professor Tyndall, or any lively London 
 apprentice out on a Sunday ; but this general supercili- 
 ousness with respect to Solomon, his Proverbs, and his 
 politics, characteristic of the modern Cockney, Yankee, 
 and Anglicised Scot, is a difficult thing to deal with for 
 us of the old school, who were well whipped when we 
 were young ; and have been in the habit of occasionally 
 ascertaining our own levels as we grew older, and of 
 recognizing that, here and there, somebody stood higher, 
 and struck harder. 
 
 9. A difficult thing to deal with, I feel more and 
 more, hourly, even to the point of almost ceasing to 
 
II. PINGUICULA. 55 
 
 write; not only every feeling I have, but, of late, even 
 every word I use, being alike inconceivable to the inso- 
 lence, and unintelligible amidst the slang, of the modern 
 London writers. Only in the last magazine I took up, I 
 found an article by Mr. Gold win Smith on the Jews (of 
 which the gist as far as it had any was that we had 
 better give up reading the Bible), and in the text of 
 which I found the word ' tribal ' repeated about ten times 
 in every page. Now, if 'tribe' makes 'tribal,' tube 
 must make tubal, cube, cubal, and gibe, gibal ; and I 
 suppose we shall next hear of tubal music, cubal min- 
 erals, and gibal conversation ! And observe how all this 
 bad English leads instantly to blunder in thought, pro- 
 longed indefinitely. The Jewish Tribes are not separate 
 races, but the descendants of brothers. The Koman 
 Tribes, political divisions ; essentially Trine : and the 
 whole force of the word Tribune vanishes, as soon as the 
 ear is wrung into acceptance of his lazy innovation by 
 the modern writer. Similarly, in the last elements of 
 mineralogy I took up, the first order of crystals was 
 called ' tesseral ' ; the writer being much too fine to call 
 them 4 four-al,' and too much bent on distinguishing 
 himself from all previous writers to call them cubic. 
 
 10. What simple schoolchildren, and sensible school- 
 masters, are to do in this atmosphere of Egyptian marsh, 
 which rains fools upon them like frogs, I can no more 
 with any hope or patience conceive ; but this finally I 
 repeat, concerning my own books, that they are written 
 
56 PROSERPINA. 
 
 in honest English, of good Johnsonian lineage, touched 
 here and there with colour of a little finer or Elizabethan 
 quality : and that the things they tell you are compre- 
 hensible by any moderately industrious and intelligent 
 person ; and accurate, to a degree which the accepted 
 methods of modern science cannot, in my own particular 
 fields, approach. 
 
 11. Of which accuracy, the reader may observe for 
 immediate instance, my extrication for him, from among 
 the uvularias, of these five species of the Butterwort; 
 which, being all that need be distinctly named and re- 
 membered, do need to be first carefully distinguished, 
 and then remembered in their companionship. So alike 
 are they, that Gerarde makes no distinction among them ; 
 but masses them under the general type of the frequent 
 English one, described as the second kind of his promis- 
 cuous group of c Sanicle,' " which Clusius calleth Pingui- 
 cula ; not before his time remembered, hath sundry small 
 thick leaves, fat and full of juice, being broad towards 
 the root and sharp towards the point, of a faint green 
 colour, and bitter in taste ; out of the middest whereof 
 sprouteth or shooteth up a naked slender stalke nine 
 inches long, every stalke bearing one flower and no more, 
 sometimes white, and sometimes of a bluish purple colour, 
 fashioned like unto the common Monkshoods" (he means 
 Larkspurs) " called Consolida Regalis, having the like spur 
 or Lark's heel attached thereto." Then after describ- 
 ing a third kind of Sanicle (Cortusa Mathioli, a large- 
 
II. PINGUICULA. 5? 
 
 leaved Alpine Primula,) be goes on : "These plants are 
 strangers in England ; their natural country is the alpish 
 mountains of Helvetia. They grow in my garden, where 
 they nourish exceedingly, except Butterwoort, which 
 growethin our English squally wet grounds," (' Squally,' 
 I believe, here, from squalid us, though Johnson does not 
 give this sense ; but one of his quotations from Ben Jon- 
 son touches it nearly : " Take heed that their new flow- 
 ers and sweetness do not as much corrupt as the others' 
 dryness and squalor," and note farther that the word 
 ' squal,' in the sense of gust, is not pure English, but the 
 Arabic i Chuaul ' with an s prefixed : the English word, 
 a form of ' squeal,' meaning a child's cry, from Gothic 
 'Squsela' and Icelandic 'squilla,' would scarcely have 
 been made an adjective by Gerarde), " and will not yield 
 to any culturing or transplanting : it groweth especially 
 in a field called Cragge Close, and at Crosbie Kavens- 
 waithe, in Westmerland ; (West-m^r^-land you observe, 
 not mor) upon Ingleborough Fells, twelve miles from 
 Lancaster, and by Harwoode in the same county near to 
 Blackburn : ten miles from Preston, in Anderness, upon 
 the bogs and niarish ground, and in the boggie meadows 
 about Bishop's-Hatfield, and also in the fens in the way 
 to Wittles Meare" (Eoger Wildrake's Squattlesea Mere ?) 
 "from Fendon, in Huntingdonshire." Where doubt- 
 less Cromwell ploughed it up, in his young days, piti- 
 lessly ; and in nowise pausing, as Burns beside his fallen 
 daisy. 
 
58 PROSERPINA. 
 
 12. Finally, however, I believe we may accept its Eng- 
 lish name of ' Butter wort ' as true Yorkshire, the more 
 enigmatic form of c Pigwilly ' preserving the tradition of 
 the flowers once abounding, with softened Latin name, 
 in Pigwilly bottom, close to Force bridge, by Kendal. 
 Gerarde draws the English variety as " Pinguicula sive 
 Sanicuia Eboracensis, Butterwoort, or Yorkshire Sani- 
 cle;" and he adds: "The husbandmen's wives of York- 
 shire do use to anoint the dugs of their kine with the fat 
 and oilous juice of the herb Butterwort when they be 
 bitten of any venomous worm, or chapped, rifted and 
 hurt by any other means." 
 
 13. In Lapland it is put to much more certain use ; 
 "it is called Tiitgrass, and the leaves are used by the in- 
 habitants to make their ' tat miolk,' a preparation of milk 
 in common use among them. Some fresh leaves are laid 
 upon a filter, and milk, yet warm from the reindeer, is 
 poured over them. After passing quickly through the 
 filter, this is allowed to rest for one or two days until it 
 becomes ascescent,* when it is found not to have sepa- 
 rated from the whey, and yet to have attained much 
 greater tenacity and consistence than it would have done 
 otherwise. The Laplanders and Swedes are said to be 
 extremely fond of this milk, which when once made, it 
 is not necessary to renew the use of. the leaves, for we are 
 told that a spoonful of it will turn another quantity of 
 
 * Lat. acesco, to turn sour. 
 
II. PINGUICULA. 59 
 
 warm milk, and make it like the first." * (Baxter, vol, 
 iii., Xo. 209.) 
 
 14. In the same page, I find quoted Dr. Johnston's 
 observation that "when specimens of this plant were 
 somewhat rudely pulled up, the flower-stalk, previously 
 erect, almost immediately began to bend itself backwards, 
 and formed a more or less perfect segment of a circle; 
 and so also, if a specimen is placed in the Botanic box, 
 you will in a short time find that the leaves have curled 
 themselves backwards, and now conceal the root by their 
 revolution." 
 
 I have no doubt that this elastic and wiry action is 
 partly connected with the plant's more or less predatory 
 or fly-trap character, in which these curiously degraded 
 plants are associated with Drosera. I separate them 
 therefore entirely from the Bladderworts, and hold them 
 to be a link between the Violets and the Droseracese, 
 
 * Withering quotes this as from Linnaeus, and adds on authority 
 of a Mr. Hawkes, " This did not succeed when tried with cows' milk." 
 He also gives as another name, Yorkshire Sanicle ; and says it is 
 called earning grass in Scotland. Linnasus says the juice will curdle 
 reindeer's milk. The name for rennet is earning, in Lincolnshire. 
 Withering also gives this note : " Pinguis, fat, from its effect in CON- 
 GEALING milk." (A.) Withering of course wrong : the name comes, 
 be the reader finally assured, from the fatness of the green leaf, quite 
 peculiar among wild plants, and fastened down for us in the French 
 word ' Grassette.' I have found the flowers also difficult to dry, in the 
 benighted early times when I used to think a dried plant useful ! See 
 closing paragraphs of the 4th chapter. R. 
 
60 PROSERPINA. 
 
 placing them, however, with the Cytherides, as a sub- 
 family, for their beautiful colour, and because they are 
 indeed a grace and delight in ground which, but for 
 them, would be painfully and rudely desolate. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 VERONICA. 
 
 1. " THE Corolla of the Foxglove," says Dr. Lindley, 
 beginning his account of the tribe at page 195 of the 
 first volume of his 4 Ladies' Botany,' " is a large inflated 
 body (!), with its throat spotted with rich purple, and its 
 border divided obliquely into five very short lobes, of 
 which the two upper are the smaller ; its four stamens 
 are of unequal length, and its style is divided into two 
 lobes at the upper end. A number of long hairs cover 
 the ovary, which contains two cells and a great quantity 
 of ovules. 
 
 " This" (sc. information) " will show you what is the 
 usual character of the Foxglove tribe ; and you will find 
 that all the other genera referred to it in books agree with 
 it essentially, although they differ in subordinate points. 
 It is chiefly (A) in the form of the corolla, (B) in the 
 number of the stamens, (C) in the consistence of the rind 
 of the fruit, (D) in its form, (E) in the number of the 
 seeds it contains, and (F) in the manner in which the 
 sepals are combined, that these differences consist." 
 
 2. The enumerative letters are of my insertion other- 
 wise the above sentence is, word for word, Dr. Lindley 's, 
 and it seems to me an interesting and memorable one 
 
62 PROSERPINA. 
 
 in tlie history of modern Botanical science. For it ap- 
 pears from the tenor of it, that in a scientific "botanist's 
 mind, six particulars, at least, in the character of a plant, 
 are merely ' subordinate points,' namely, 
 
 1. (F) The combination of its calyx, 
 
 2. (A) The shape of its corolla, 
 
 3. (B) The number of its stamens, 
 
 4. (D) The form of its fruit, 
 
 5. (C) The consistence of its shell, and 
 
 6. (E) The number of seeds in it. 
 
 Abstracting, then, from the primary description, all the 
 six inessential points, I find the three essential ones left 
 are, that the style is divided into two lobes at the upper 
 end, that a number of glandular hairs cover the ovary, 
 and that this latter contains two cells. 
 
 3. None of which particulars concern any reasonable 
 mortal, looking at a Foxglove, in the smallest degree. 
 Whether hairs which he can't see are glandular or bristly, 
 whether the green knobs, which are left when the pur- 
 ple bells are gone, are divided into two lobes or two hun- 
 dred, and whether the style is split, like a snake's tongue, 
 into two lobes, or like a rogue's, into any number are 
 merely matters of vulgar curiosity, which he needs a mi- 
 croscope to discover, and will lose a day of his life in 
 discovering. But if any pretty young Proserpina, es- 
 caped from the Plutonic durance of London, and carried 
 by the tubular process, which replaces Charon's boat, over 
 
III. VERONICA. 63 
 
 the Lime at Lancaster, cares to come and walk on the 
 Coniston hills in a summer morning, when the eyebright 
 is out on the high fields, she may gather, with a little 
 help from Brantwood garden, a bouquet of the entire 
 Foxglove tribe in flower, as it is at present defined, and 
 may see what they are like, altogether. 
 
 4. She shall gather : first, the Euphrasy, which makes 
 the turf on the brow of the hill glitter as if with new- 
 fallen manna ; then, from one of the blue clusters on the 
 top of the garden wall, the common bright blue Speed- 
 well ; and, from the garden bed beneath, a dark blue 
 spire of Veronica spicata ; then, at the nearest opening 
 into the wood, a little foxglove in its first delight of 
 shaking out its bells ; then what next does the Doctor 
 
 O * 
 
 say? a snapdragon? we must go back into the garden 
 for that here is a goodly crimson one, but what the 
 little speedwell will think of him for a relative I can't 
 think! a mullein? that we must do without for the 
 moment ; a monkey flower ? that we will do without, 
 altogether ; a lady's slipper ? say rather a goblin's with 
 the gout ! but, such as the flower-cobbler has made it, 
 here is one of the kind that people praise, out of the 
 greenhouse, and yet a figwort we must have, too ; 
 which I see on referring to London, may be balm-leaved, 
 hemp-leaved, tansy -leaved, nettle-leaved, wing-leaved, 
 heart-leaved, ear-leaved, spear-leaved, or lyre-leaved. I 
 think I can find a balm-leaved one, though I don't know 
 what to make of it when I've got it, but it's called a 
 
64 PKOSERPIXA. 
 
 'Scorodonia' in Sowerbj, and something very ugly be- 
 sides; I'll put a bit of Teucrium Scorodonia in, to 
 finish : and now how will my young Proserpina arrange 
 her bouquet, and rank the fanrily relations to their con- 
 tentment ? 
 
 5. She has only one kind of flowers- in her hand, as 
 botanical classification stands at present ; and whether 
 the system be more rational, or in any human sense more 
 scientific, which puts calceolaria and speedwejl together, 
 and foxglove and euphrasy ; and runs them on one 
 side into the mints, and on the other into the night- 
 shades ; naming them, meanwhile, some from diseases, 
 some from vermin, some from blockheads, and the rest 
 anyhow: or the method I am pleading for, which 
 teaches us, watchful of their seasonable return and chosen 
 abiding places, to associate in our memory the flowers 
 which truly resemble, or fondly companion, or, in time 
 kept by the signs of Heaven, succeed, each other ; and 
 to name them in some historical connection with the 
 loveliest fancies and most helpful faiths of the ancestral 
 world Proserpina be judge ; with every maid that sets 
 flowers on brow or breast from Thule to Sicily. 
 
 6. We will unbind our bouquet, then, and putting all 
 the rest of its flowers aside, examine the range and nature 
 of the little blue cluster only. 
 
 And first we have to note of it, that the plan of the 
 blossom in all the kinds is thtf same ; an irregular quatre- 
 foil : and irregular quatrefoils are of extreme rarity in 
 
III. VERONICA. G5 
 
 flower form. I don't myself know one, except the Veron- 
 ica. The cruciform vegetables the heaths, the olives, 
 the lilacs, the little Tormentillas, and the poppies, are all 
 perfectly symmetrical. Two of the petals, indeed, as a 
 rule, are different from the other two, except in the 
 heaths ; and thus a distinctly crosslet form obtained, but 
 always an equally balanced one : while in the Yeronica, 
 as in the Violet, the blossom always refers itself to a 
 supposed place on the stalk with respect to the ground ; 
 and the upper petal is always the largest. 
 
 The supposed place is often very suppositious indeed 
 for clusters of the common veronicas, if luxuriant, 
 throw their blossoms about anywhere. But the idea of 
 an upper and lower petal is always kept in the flower's 
 little mind. 
 
 7. In the second place, it is a quite open and flat 
 quatrefoil so separating itself from the belled quadra- 
 ture of the heath, and the tubed and primrose-like quad- 
 rature of the cruciferse ; and, both as a quatrefoil, and as 
 an open one, it is separated from the foxgloves and snap- 
 dragons, which are neither quatref oils, nor open ; but are 
 cinqfoils shut up ! 
 
 8. In the third place, open and flat though the flower 
 be, it is monopetalous ; all the four arms of the cross 
 strictly becoming one in the centre ; so that, though the 
 blue foils look no less sharply separate than those of a 
 buttercup or a cistus ; and are so delicate that one ex- 
 pects them to fall from their stalk if we breathe too 
 
66 PROSERPINA. 
 
 near, do but lay hold of one, and, at the touch, the 
 entire blossom is lifted from its stalk, and may be laid, 
 in perfect shape, on our paper before us, as easily as if 
 it had been a nicely made-up blue bonnet, lifted off its 
 stand by the milliner. 
 
 I pause here, to consider a little ; because I find myself 
 mixing up two characteristics which have nothing neces- 
 sary in their relation ; namely, the unity of the blossom, 
 and its coming easily off the stalk. The separate petals of 
 the cistus and cherry fall as easily as the foxglove drops 
 its bells; on the other hand, there are monopetalous 
 things that don't drop, but hold on like the convoluta,* 
 and make the rest of the tree sad for their dying. I do 
 not see my way to any systematic noting of decadent or 
 persistent corolla ; but, in passing, we may thank the 
 veronica for never allowing us to see how it fades, f and 
 being always cheerful and lovely, while it is with us. 
 
 9. And for a farther specialty, I think we should take 
 note of the purity and simplicity of its floral blue, not 
 
 * I find much more difficulty, myself, being old, in using my al- 
 tered names for species than my young scholars will. In watching 
 the bells of the purple bindweed fade at evening, let them learn the 
 fourth verse of the prayer of Hezekiah, as it is in the Vulgate 
 " Genera tio mea ablata est, et convoluta est a me, sicut tabernaculum 
 pastoiis," and they will not forget the name of the fast-fading ever 
 renewed " belle (Tun jour." 
 
 f " It is Miss Cobbe, I think, who says ' all wild flowers know how 
 to die gracefully.' " A. 
 
UI, YEROXICA. 67 
 
 sprinkling itself with unwholesome sugar like a larkspur, 
 nor varying into coppery or turquoise-like hue as the 
 forget-me-not; but keeping itself as modest as a blue 
 print, pale, in the most frequent kinds ; but pure exceed- 
 ingly ; and rejoicing in fellowship with the grey of its 
 native rocks. The palest of all I think it will be well 
 to remember as Veronica Clara, the "Poor Clare" of 
 Veronicas. I find this note on it in my diary, 
 
 4 The flower of an exquisite grey- white, like lichen, or 
 shaded hoar-frost, or dead silver; making the long- 
 weathered stones it grew upon perfect with a finished 
 modesty of paleness, as if the flower could be blue, and 
 would not, for their sake. Laying its fine small leaves 
 along in embroidery, like Anagallis tenella, indescrib- 
 able in the tender feebleness of it afterwards as it grew, 
 dropping the little blossoms from the base of the spire, 
 before the buds at the top had blown. Gathered, it was 
 happy beside me, with a little water under a stone, and 
 put out one pale blossom after another, day by day.' 
 
 10. Lastly, and for a high worthiness, in my estimate, 
 note that it is wild, of the wildest, and proud in pure 
 descent of race ; submitting itself to no follies of the 
 cur-breeding florist. Its species, though many resem- 
 bling each other, are severally constant in aspect., and 
 easily recognizable; and I have never seen it provoked 
 to glare into any gigantic impudence at a flower show. 
 Fortunately, perhaps, it is scentless, and so despised. 
 
 11. Before I attempt arranging its families, we must 
 
68 PROSERPINA. 
 
 note that while the corolla itself is one of the most con- 
 stant in form, and so distinct from all other blossoms 
 that it may be always known at a glance ; the leaves and 
 habit of growth vary so greatly in families of different 
 climates, and those born for special situations, moist or 
 dry, and the like, that it is quite impossible to character- 
 ize Veronic, or Veronique, vegetation in general terms. 
 One can say, comfortably, of a strawberry, that it is a 
 creeper, without expecting at the next moment to see a 
 steeple of strawberry blossoms rise to contradict us ; we 
 can venture to say of a foxglove that it grows in a spire, 
 without any danger of finding, farther on, a carpet of 
 prostrate and entangling digitalis; and we may pro- 
 nounce of a buttercup that it grows mostly in meadows, 
 without fear of finding ourselves, at the edge of the next 
 thicket, under the shadow of a buttercup-bush growing 
 into valuable timber. But the Veronica reclines with 
 the lowly,* upon occasion, arid aspires, with the proud ; 
 is here the pleased companion of the ground-ivies, and 
 there the unrebuked rival of the larkspurs : on the rocks 
 of Coniston it effaces itself almost into the film of a 
 lichen ; it pierces the snows of Iceland with the gentian : 
 and in the Falkland Islands is a white-blossomed ever- 
 green, of which botanists are in dispute whether it be 
 Veronica or Olive. 
 
 * See distinction betwfeon recumbent and rampant herbs, below, 
 under ' Veronica Agrestis,' p. 72. 
 
III. VERONICA. 69 
 
 12. Of these many and various forms, I find the man- 
 ners and customs alike inconstant ; and this of especially 
 singular in them that the Alpine and northern species 
 bloom hardily in contest with the retiring snows, while 
 with us they wait till the spring is past, and offer them- 
 selves to us only in consolation for the vanished violet 
 and primrose. As we farther examine the ways of 
 plants, I suppose we shall find some that determine upon 
 a fixed season, and will bloom methodically in June or 
 July, whether in Abyssinia or Greenland; and others, 
 like the violet and crocus, which are flowers of the spring, 
 at whatever time of the favouring or frowning year the 
 spring returns to their country. I suppose also that 
 botanists and gardeners know all these matters thorough- 
 ly : but they don't put them into their books, and the 
 clear notions of them only come to me now, as I think 
 and watch. 
 
 13. Broadly, however, the families of the Veronica 
 fall into three main divisions, those which have round 
 leaves lobed at the edge, like ground ivy ; those which 
 have small thyme-like leaves ; and those which have long 
 leaves like a foxglove's, only smaller never more than 
 two or two and a half inches long. I therefore take them 
 in these connections, though without any bar between 
 the groups ; only separating the Regina from the other 
 thyme-leaved ones, to give her due precedence ; and the 
 rest will then arrange themselves into twenty families, 
 easily distinguishable and memorable. 
 
70 
 
 PROSERPINA. 
 
 I have chosen for Veronica Kegina, the brave Ice- 
 landic one, which pierces the snow in first spring, with 
 lovely small shoots of perfectly set leaves, no larger than 
 
 FIG. IV. 
 
 a grain of wheat ; the flowers in a lifted cluster of five or 
 six together, not crowded, yet not loose ; large, for ve- 
 ronica about the size of a silver penny, or say half an 
 inch across deep blue, with ruby centre. 
 
III. VERONICA. 71 
 
 My woodcut, Fig. 4, is outlined * from the beautiful 
 engraving D. 342,f there called ' fruticulosa,' from the 
 number of the young shoots 
 
 14. Beneath the Kegina, come the twenty easily dis- 
 tinguished families, namely : 
 
 1. Chamaedrys. ' Ground-oak.' I cannot tell why so 
 called its small and rounded leaves having nothing like 
 oak leaves about them, except the serration, which is 
 common to half, at least, of all leaves that grow. But 
 
 * 'Abstracted' rather, I should have said, and with perfect skill, 
 by Mr. Collingwood (the joint translator of Xenophon's Economics 
 for the ' Bibliotheca Pastorum '). So also the next following cut, 
 Fig. 5. 
 
 f Of the references, henceforward necessary to the books I have 
 used as authorities, the reader will please note the following abbrevi- 
 ations : 
 
 C. Curtis's Magazine of Botany. 
 
 D. Flora Danica. 
 
 F. Figuier. 
 
 G. Sibthorpe's Flora Graca. 
 
 L. Linna3us. Systema Naturae. 
 
 L. S. Linnaeus's Flora Suecica. But till we are quite used to the 
 
 other letters, I print this reference in words. 
 L. N. William Curtis 's Flora Londinensis. Of the exquisite plates 
 
 engraved for this book by James Sowerby, note is taken in 
 
 the close of next chapter. 
 O. Sowerby's English Wild Flowers ; the old edition in thirty-two 
 
 thin volumes far the best. 
 S. Sowerby's English Wild Flowers ; the modern edition in ten 
 
 volumes. 
 
72 PROSERPINA. 
 
 the idea is all over Europe, apparently. Fr. l petit 
 chene : ' German and English ' Germander,' a merely 
 corrupt form of Chamsedrys. 
 
 The representative English veronica "Germander 
 Speedwell" very prettily drawn in S. 986 ; too tall and 
 weed-like in D. 448. 
 
 2. Hederifolia. Ivy-leaved : but more properly, cym- 
 balaria-leaved. It is the English field representative, 
 though blue-flowered, of the Byzantine white veronica, 
 Y. Cymbalaria, very beautifully drawn in G. 9. Hederi- 
 folia well in D. 428. 
 
 3. Agrestis. Fr. 'Rustique.' "We ought however 
 clearly to understand whether ' agrestis,' used by English 
 botanists, is meant to imply a literally field flower,, or 
 only a 'rustic' one, which might as properly grow in a 
 wood. I shall always myself use ' agrestis ' in the literal 
 sense, and 'rustica' for 'rustique.' I see no reason, in 
 the present case, for separating the Polite from the Rus- 
 tic flower : the agrestis, D. 449 and S. 971, seems to me 
 not more meekly recumbent, nor more frankly culture- 
 less, than the so-called Polita, S. 972 : there seems also 
 no French acknowledgment of its politeness, and the 
 Greek family, G. 8, seem the rudest and wildest of all. 
 
 Quite afield flower it is, I believe, lying always low on 
 the ground ; recumbent, but not creeping. Note this dif- 
 ference : no fastening roots are thrown out by the repos- 
 ing stems of this Veronica ; a creeping or accurately ' ram- 
 pant' plant roots itself in advancing. Conf. Nos, 5, 6. 
 
III. VERONICA. 73 
 
 4. Arvensis. We have yet to note a still finer dis- 
 tinction in epithet. ' Agrestis ' will properly mean a 
 flower of the open ground yet not caring whether the 
 piece of earth be cultivated or not, so long as it is under 
 clear sky. But when agri-culture has turned the unfruit- 
 ful acres into c arva beata,' if then the plant thrust it- 
 self between the furrows of the plough, it is properly 
 called ' Arvensis.' 
 
 I don't quite see my way to the same distinction in 
 English, perhaps I may get into the habit, as time goes 
 on, of calling the Arvenses consistently furrow-flowers, 
 and the Agrestes field-flowers. Furrow- veronica is a tire- 
 somely long name, but must do for the present, as the 
 best interpretation of its Latin character, " vulgatissima 
 in cultis et arvis." D. 515. The blossom itself is exquis- 
 itely delicate ; and we may be thankful, both here and 
 in Denmark, for such a lovely ' vulgate.' 
 
 5. Montana. D. 1201. The first really creeping plant 
 we have had to notice. It throws out roots from the re- 
 cumbent stems. Otherwise like agrestis, it has leaves 
 like ground-ivy. Called a wood species in the text 
 ofD. 
 
 6. Persica. An eastern form, but now perfectly natu- 
 ralized here D. 1982 ; S. 973. The flowers very large, 
 and extremely beautiful, but only one springing from 
 each leaf-axil. 
 
 Leaves and stem like Montana ; and also creeping with 
 new roots at intervals. 
 
74 PROSERPINA. 
 
 7. Triphylla, (not triphylle>s, see Flora Suecica, 22). 
 Meaning trifid-leaved ; but the leaf is really divided into 
 live lobes, not three see S. 974, and G. 10. The palmate 
 form of the leaf seems a mere caprice, and indicates no 
 transitional form in the plant : it may be accepted as only 
 a momentary compliment of mimicry to the geraniums. 
 The Siberian variety, ' multifida,' C. 1679, divides itself 
 almost as the submerged^ leaves of the water-ranunculus. 
 
 The triphylla itself is widely diffused, growing alike 
 on the sandy fields of Kent, and of Troy. In I). 627 is 
 given an extremely delicate and minute northern type, 
 the flowers springing as in Persica, one from each leaf- 
 axil, and at distant intervals. 
 
 8. Officinalis. D. 248, S. 294. Fr. 'Yeronique offi- 
 cinale ' ; (Germ. Gebrauchlicher Ehrenpreis,) our com- 
 monest English and Welsh speedwell ; richest in cluster 
 and frankest in roadside growth, whether on bank or 
 rock ; but assuredly liking either a bank or a rock, an4 
 the top of a wall better than the shelter of one. Un- 
 countable ''myriads,' I am tempted to write, but, cau- 
 tiously and literally, 'hundreds' of blossoms if one 
 could count, ranging certainly towards the thousand in 
 some groups, all bright at once, make our Westmoreland 
 lanes look as if they were decked for weddings, in early 
 summer. In the Danish Flora it is drawn small and 
 poor ; its southern type being the true one : but it is dif- 
 ficult to explain the difference between the look of a 
 flower which really suffers, as in this instance, by a colder 
 
III. VERONICA. 75 
 
 climate, and becomes mean and weak, as well as dwarfed ; 
 and one which is braced and brightened by the cold, 
 though diminished, as if under the charge and charm of 
 an affectionate fairy, and becomes a joyfully patriotic in- 
 heritor of wilder scenes and skies. Medicinal, to soul 
 and body alike, this gracious and domestic flower; though 
 astringent and bitter in the juice. It is the Welsh deeply 
 honoured ' Fluellen.' See final note on the myth of 
 Veronica, see 18. 
 
 9. Thymifolia. Thyme-leaved, G. 6. Of course the 
 longest possible word serpyllifolia is u&ed in S. 978. 
 It is a high mountain plant, growing on the top of Crete 
 as the snow retires ; and the Veronica minor of Gerarde ; 
 "the roote is small and threddie, taking hold of the up- 
 per surface of the earth, where it spreadeth." So also 
 it is drawn as a creeper in F. 492, where the flower ap- 
 pears to be oppressed and concealed by the leafage. 
 
 10. Minuta, called 'hirsuta' in S. 985: an ugly char- 
 acteristic to name the lovely little thing by. The dis- 
 tinct blue lines in the petals might perhaps justify i picta' 
 or ' lineata,' rather than an epithet of size ; but I suppose 
 it is Gerarde's Minima, and so leave it, more safely named 
 as < minute ' than ' least.' For I think the next variety 
 may dispute the leastness. 
 
 11. Verna. D. 252. Mountains, in dry places in 
 earlv spring. Upright, and confused in the leafage, 
 which is sharp-pointed and close set, much hiding the 
 blossom, but of extreme elegance, fit for a sacred fore- 
 
76 PROSERPINA. 
 
 ground ; as any gentle student will feel, who copies this 
 
 outline from the Flora Danica, Fig. 5. 
 
 12. Peregrina. Another extremely small variety, 
 nearly pink in colour, passing in- 
 to bluish lilac and white. Amer- 
 ican ; but called, I do not see 
 why, ' Veronique voyageusej by 
 the French, and Fremder Ehren- 
 preis in Germany. Given as a 
 frequent English weed in S. 927. 
 
 13. Alpina. Veronique des 
 Alpes. Gebirgs Ehrenpreis. Still 
 minute ; its scarcely distinct 
 flowers forming a close head 
 among the leaves; round petal- 
 led in D. 16, but sharp, as usual, 
 in S. 980. On the Norway 
 Alps in grassy places ; and in 
 Scotland by the side of moun- 
 tain rills; but rare. On Ben 
 Nevis and Lachin y Gair (S.) 
 
 14. Scutellata. From the 
 shield-like shape of its seed-ves- 
 sels. Veronique a Ecusson ; 
 
 FlG - V " Schildf ruchtiger Ehrenpreis. 
 
 But the seed-vessels are more heart shape than shield. 
 Marsh Speedwell. S. 988, D. 209, in the one pink, 
 in the other blue ; but again in D. .1561, pink. 
 
III. VERONICA. 77 
 
 "In flooded meadows, common." (D.) A spoiled 
 and scattered form ; the seeds too conspicuous, but the 
 flowers very delicate, hence ' Gratiola minima' in Gesuer. 
 The confused ramification of the clusters worth noting, 
 in relation to the equally straggling fibres of root. 
 
 15. Spicata. S. 982 : very prettily done, representing 
 the inside of the flower as deep blue, the outside pale. 
 The top of the spire, all calices, the calyx being indeed, 
 through all the veronicas, an important and persistent 
 member. 
 
 The tendency to arrange itself in spikes is to be noted 
 as a degradation of the veronic character ; connecting it 
 on one side with the snapdragons, on the other with the 
 ophryds. In Veronica Ophrydea, (C. 2210,) this resem- 
 blance to the contorted tribe is carried so far that " the 
 corolla of the veronica becomes irregular, the tube gib- 
 bous, the faux (throat)^ hairy, and three of the lacinise 
 (lobes of petals) variously twisted." The spire of blossom, 
 violet-coloured, is then close set, and exactly resembles an 
 ophryd, except in being sharper at the top. The en- 
 graved outline of the blossom is good, and very curious. 
 
 16. Gentianoides. This is the most directly and cu- 
 riously imitative among the shall we call them 'his- 
 trionic ' types of Veronica. It grows exactly like a clus- 
 tered upright gentian ; has the same kind of leaves at its 
 root, and springs with the same bright vitality among 
 the retiring snows of the Bithynian Olympus. (G. 5.) 
 If, however, the Caucasian flower, C. 1002, be the same, 
 
7S PROSERPINA. 
 
 it lias lost its perfect grace in luxuriance, growing as 
 large as an asphodel, and with root-leaves half a foot long. 
 
 The petals are much veined; and this, of all veronicas, 
 has the lower petal smallest in proportion to the three 
 above, " triplo aut quadruple) minori." (G.) 
 
 17. Stagnarum. Marsh - Veronica. The last four 
 families we have been examining vary from the typical 
 Veronicas not only in their lance-shaped clusters, but in 
 their lengthened, and often every way much enlarged 
 leaves also : and the two which we now will take in asso- 
 ciation, 17 and 18, carry the change in aspect farthest 
 of any, being both of them true water-plants, with strong 
 stems and thick leaves. The present name of my Veron- 
 ica Stagnarum is however V. anagallis, a mere insult to 
 the little water primula, which one plant of the Veronica 
 would make fifty of. This is a rank water-weed, having 
 confused bunches of blossom and seed, like unripe cur- 
 rants, dangling from the leaf -axils. So that where the 
 little triphylla, (No. 7, above,) has only one blossom, 
 daintily set, and well seen, this has a litter of twenty- 
 five or thirty on a long stalk, of which only three or four 
 are well out as flowers, and the rest are mere knobs of 
 bud or seed. The stalk is thick (half an inch round at 
 the bottom), the leaves long and misshapen. " Frequens 
 in fossis," D. 203. French, Mouron d'Ean, but I don't 
 know the root or exact meaidng of Mouron. 
 
 An ugly Australian species, 'labiata,' C. 1660, has 
 leaves two inches long, of the shape of an aloe's, and 
 
III. VERONICA. 
 
 79 
 
 parti v aloeine in texture, " sawed with unequal, fleshy, 
 pointed teeth.'' 
 
 18. Fontiuin. Brook - Veronica. Brook -Lime, the 
 Anglo-Saxon 'lime' from Latin limns, meaning the soft 
 mnd of streams. German ( Bach-bnnge ' (Brook-purse ?) 
 ridiculously changed by the botanists into ' Beccabunga,' 
 fur a Latin name ! Yery beautiful in its crowded green 
 leaves as a stream-companion ; rich and bright more than 
 watercress. See notice of it at Matlock, in l Modern 
 Painters,' vol. v. 
 
 19. Clara. Yeroniqiie des rochers. Saxatilis, I sup- 
 pose, in Sowerby, but am not sure of having identified 
 that with my own favourite, for which I therefore keep 
 the name ' Clara,' (see above, 9) ; and the other rock 
 variety, if indeed another, must be remembered, together 
 with it. 
 
 20. Glauca. G. 7. And this, at all events, with the 
 Clara, is to be remembered as closing the series of twenty 
 families, acknowledged by Proserpina. It is a beautiful 
 low-growing ivy-leaved type, with flowers of subdued 
 lilac blue. On Mount Hymettus: no other locality 
 given in the Flora Grgeca. 
 
 15. I am sorry, and shall always be so, when the vari- 
 eties of any flower which I have to commend to the stu- 
 dent's memory, exceed ten or twelve in number ; but I 
 am content to gratify his pride with lengthier task, if 
 indeed he will resign himself to the imperative close of 
 the more inclusive catalogue, and be content to know 
 
80 PIlOSERPItfA. 
 
 the twelve, or sixteen, or twenty, acknowledged families, 
 thoroughly ; and only in their illustration to think of 
 rarer forms. The object of 'Proserpina' is to make him 
 happily cognizant of the common aspect of Greek and 
 English flowers ; under the term ' English,' comprehend- 
 ing the Saxon, Celtic, Korman, and Danish Floras. Of 
 the evergreen shrub alluded to in 11 above, the Ve- 
 ronica Decussata of the Pacific, which is " a bushy ever- 
 green, with beautifully set cross-leaves, and white blos- 
 soms scented like olea fragrans," I should like him only 
 to read with much surprise, and some incredulity, in 
 Pinkerton's or other entertaining travellers' voyages. 
 
 16. And of the families given, he is to note for the 
 common simple characteristic, that they are quatrefoils 
 referred to a more or less elevated position on a central 
 stem, and having, in that relation, the lowermost petal 
 diminished, contrary to the almost universal habit of 
 other flowers to develope in such a position the lower 
 petal chiefly, that it may have its full share of light. 
 You will find nothing but blunder and embarrassment 
 result from any endeavour to enter into further particu- 
 lars, such as " the relation of the dissepiment with respect 
 to the valves of the capsule," etc., etc., since " in the 
 various species of Veronica almost every kind of dehis- 
 cence may be observed " (C. under V. perfoliata, 1936, 
 an Australian species). Sibthorpe gives the entire defi- 
 nition of Veronica with only one epithet added to mine, 
 " Corolla quadrifida, rotata, lacinia infima angustiore," 
 
III. VERONICA. 81 
 
 but I do not know what ' rotata ' here means, as there is 
 no appearance of revolved action in the petals, so far as 
 I can see. 
 
 17. Of the mythic or poetic significance of the ver- 
 onica, there is less to be said than of its natural beauty. 
 I have not been able to discover with what feeling, or at 
 what time, its sacred name was originally given ; and the 
 legend of S. Veronica herself is, in the substance of it, 
 irrational, and therefore incredible. The meaning of 
 the term i rational,' as applied to a legend or miracle, is, 
 that there has been an intelligible need for the permis- 
 sion of the miracle at the time when it is recorded ; and 
 that the nature and manner of the act itself should be 
 comprehensible in the scope. There was thus quite sim- 
 ple need for Christ to feed the multitudes, and to appear 
 to S. Paul ; but no need, so far as human intelligence 
 can reach, for the reflection of His features upon a piece 
 of linen which could be seen by not one in a million *)f 
 the disciples to whom He might more easily, at any time,- 
 manifest Himself personally and perfectly. Nor, I be- 
 lieve, has the story of S. Veronica ever been asserted to 
 be other than symbolic by the sincere teachers of the 
 Church ; and, even so far as in that merely explanatory 
 function, it became the seal of an extreme sorrow, it is 
 not easy to understand how the pensive fable was asso- 
 ciated with a flower so familiar, so bright, and so popu- 
 larly of good omen, as the Speedwell. 
 
 18. Yet, the fact being actually so, and this consecra- 
 
82 PROSERPINA. 
 
 tion of the veronica being certainly far more ancient and 
 earnest than the faintly romantic and extremely absurd 
 legend of the forget-me-not; the speedwell has assuredly 
 the higher claim to be given and accepted as a token of 
 pure and faithful love, and to be trusted as a sweet sign 
 that the innocence of affection is indeed more frequent, 
 and the appointed destiny of its faith more fortunate, 
 than our inattentive hearts have hitherto discerned. 
 
 19. And this the more, because the recognized virtues 
 and uses of the plant are real and manifold ; and the 
 ideas of a peculiar honourableness and worth of life con- 
 nected with it by the German popular name ' Honour- 
 prize ' ; while to the heart of the British race, the same 
 thought is brought home by Shakespeare's adoption of 
 the flower's Welsh name, for the faithfullest common 
 soldier of his ideal king. As a lover's pledge, therefore, 
 it does not merely mean memory ; for, indeed, why 
 should love be thought of as such at all, if it need to 
 promise riot to forget ? but the blossom is significant 
 also of the lover's best virtues, patience in suffering, 
 purity in thought, gaiety in courage, and serenity in 
 truth : and therefore I make it, worthily, the clasping 
 and central flower of the Cytherides. 
 
GHAPTEK IY. 
 
 GIULIETTA. 
 
 1. SUPPOSING that, in early life, one had the power of 
 living to one's fancy, and why should we not, if the 
 said fancy were restrained by the knowledge of the two 
 great laws concerning our nature, that happiness is in- 
 creased, not by the enlargement of the possessions, but 
 of the heart; and days lengthened, not by the crowding 
 of emotions, but the economy of them? if thus taught, 
 we had, I repeat, the ordering of our house and estate in 
 our own hands, I believe no manner of temperance in 
 pleasure would be better rewarded than that of making 
 our gardens gay only with common flowers ; and leaving 
 those which needed care for their transplanted life to be 
 found in their native places when we travelled. So long 
 as I had crocus and daisy in the spring, roses in the sum- 
 mer, and hollyhocks and pinks in the autumn, I used to 
 be myself independent of farther horticulture, and it 
 is only now that I am old, and since pleasant travelling 
 has become impossible to me, that I am thankful to have 
 the white narcissus in my borders, instead of waiting to 
 walk through the fragrance of the meadows of Clarens ; 
 and pleased to see the milk wort blue on my scythe-mown 
 
84 PROSE K PI \ A. 
 
 banks, since I cannot gather it any more on the rocks of 
 the Vosges, or in the divine glens of Jura. 
 
 2. Among the losses, all the more fatal in heing un- 
 felt, brought upon us by the fury and vulgarity of 
 modern life, I count for one of the saddest, the loss of 
 the wish to gather a flower in travelling. The other day, 
 whether indeed a sign of some dawning of doubt and 
 remorse in the public mind, as to the perfect jubilee of 
 railroad journey, or merely a piece of the common daily 
 flattery on which the power of the British press first de- 
 pends, I cannot judge ; but, for one or other of such 
 motives, I saw lately in some illustrated paper, a pictorial 
 comparison of old-fashioned and modern travel, represent- 
 ing, as the type of things passed away, the outside passen- 
 gers of the mail shrinking into huddled and silent dis- 
 tress from the swirl of a winter snowstorm ; and for 
 type of the present Elysian dispensation, the inside of a 
 first-class saloon carriage, with a beautiful young lady in 
 the last pattern of Parisian travelling dress, conversing, 
 Daily news in hand, with a young officer her fortunate 
 vis-a-vis on the subject of our military successes in 
 Afghanistan and Zululand.* 
 
 3. I will not, in presenting it must not be called the 
 other side, but the supplementary, and wilfully omitted, 
 facts, of this ideal, oppose, as I fairly might, the dis- 
 
 * See letter on the last results of our African campaigns, in the 
 Morning Post of April 14th ; of this year. 
 
IV. GIULIETTA. 85 
 
 comforts of a modern cheap excursion train, to the 
 chariot-and-four, with outriders and courier, of ancient 
 noblesse. I will compare only the actual facts, in the 
 former and in latter years, of my own journey from Paris 
 to Geneva. As matters are now arranged, I find myself, 
 at half past eight in the evening, wailing in a confused 
 crowd with which I am presently to contend for a seat, 
 in the dim light and cigar-stench of the great station of 
 the Lyons line. Making slow way through the hostili- 
 ties of the platform, in partly real, partly weak polite- 
 as may be, I find the corner seats of course already 
 full of prohibitory cloaks and umbrellas ; but manage to 
 get a middle back one ; the net overhead is already sur- 
 charged with a bulging extra portmanteau, so that I 
 squeeze my desk as well as I can between my legs, and 
 arrange what wraps I have about my knees and shoulders. 
 Follow a couple of hours of simple patience, with noth- 
 ing to entertain one's thoughts but the steady roar of the 
 line under the wheels, the blinking and dripping of the 
 oil lantern, and the more or less ungainly wretchedness, 
 and variously sullen compromises and encroachments of 
 posture, among the five other passengers preparing them- 
 selves for sleep : the last arrangement for the night be- 
 ing to shut up both windows, in order to effect, with our 
 six breaths, a salutary modification of the night air. 
 
 4. The banging and bumping of the carriages over the 
 turn-tables wakes me up as I am beginning to doze, at 
 Fontainebleau, and again at Sens ; and the trilling and 
 
86 PROSERPINA. 
 
 thrilling of the little telegraph bell establishes itself in 
 my ears, and stays there, trilling me at last into a shiver 
 ing, suspicious sort of sleep, which, with a few vaguely 
 fretful shrugs and fidgets, carries me as far as Tonnerre, 
 where the "quinze minutes d'arret ' revolutionize every- 
 thing ; and I get a turn or two on the platform, and 
 perhaps a glimpse of the stars, with promise of a clear 
 morning ; and so generally keep awake past Mont Bard, 
 remembering the happy walks one used to have on the 
 terrace under Buffon's tower, and thence watching, if 
 perchance, from the mouth of the high tunnel, any film 
 of moonlight may show the far undulating masses of the 
 hills of Citeaux. But most likely one knows the place 
 where the great old view used to be only by the sensible 
 quickening of the pace as the train turns down the in- 
 cline, and crashes through the trenched cliffs into the con- 
 fusion and high clattering vault of the station at Dijon. 
 
 5. And as my journey is almost always in the spring- 
 time, the twisted spire of the cathedral usually shows it- 
 self against the first grey of dawn, as we run out again 
 southwards : and resolving to watch the sunrise, I fall 
 more complacently asleep, and the sun is really up by 
 the time one has to change carriages, and get morning 
 coffee at Macon. And from Amberieux, through the 
 Jura valley, one is more or less feverishly happy and 
 thankful, not so much for being in sight of Mont Blanc 
 again, as in having got through the nasty and gloomy 
 night journey ; and then the sight of the Rhone and 
 
IT. G1ULIETTA. 87 
 
 the Saleve seems only like a dream, presently to end in 
 nothingness ; till, covered with dust, and feeling as if one 
 nover should be fit for anything any more, one staggers 
 down the hill to the Hotel des Eergues, and sees the 
 dirtied Rhone, with its new iron bridge, and the smoke 
 of a new factory exactly dividing the line of the aiguilles 
 of Chamouni. 
 
 6. That is the journey as it is now, and as, for me, it 
 must be ; except on foot, since there is now no other way 
 of making it. But this was the way we used to manage 
 it in old days : 
 
 Very early in Continental transits we had found out 
 that the family travelling carriage, taking much time 
 and ingenuity to load, needing at the least three, usually 
 four horses, and on Alpine passes six, not only jolted 
 and lagged painfully on bad roads, but was liable in every 
 way to more awkward discomfitures than lighter vehi- 
 cles ; getting itself jammed in archways, wrenched with 
 damage out of ruts, and involved in volleys of justifiable 
 reprobation among market stalls. So when we knew 
 better, my father and mother always had their own old- 
 fashioned light two-horse carriage to themselves, and I 
 had one made with any quantity of front and side 
 pockets for books and picked up stones ; and hung very 
 low, with a fixed side-step, which I could get off or on 
 with the horses at the trot ; and at any rise or fall of the 
 road, relieve them, and get my own walk, without troub- 
 ling the driver to think of me. 
 
88 PEOSERPINA. 
 
 7. Thus, leaving Paris in the bright spring morning, 
 when the Seine glittered gaily at Charenton, and the 
 arbres de Judee were mere pyramids of purple bloom 
 round Villeneuve-St.-Georges, one had an afternoon walk 
 among the rocks of Fontainebleau, and next day we got 
 early into Sens, for new lessons in its cathedral aisles, 
 and the first saunter among the budding vines of the 
 coteaux. I finished my plate of the Tower of Giotto, 
 for the < Seven Lamps,' in the old inn at Sens, which 
 Dickens has described in his wholly matchless way in the 
 last chapter of 'Mrs. Lirripers Lodgings'. The next day 
 brought us to the oolite limestones at Mont Bard, and 
 we always spent the Sunday at the Bell in Dijon. Mon- 
 day, the drive of drives, through the village of Genlis, 
 the fortress of Auxonne, and up the hill to the vine- 
 surrounded town of Dole ; whence, behold at last the 
 limitless ranges of Jura, south and' north, beyond the 
 woody plain, and above them the * Derniers Rochers ' 
 and the white square-set summit, worshipped ever anew. 
 Then at Poligny, the same afternoon, we gathered the 
 first milkwort for that year; and on Tuesday, at St. 
 Laurent, the wild lily of the valley ; and on Wednesday, 
 at Morez, gentians. 
 
 And on Thursday, the eighth or ninth day from Paris, 
 days all spent patiently and well, one saw from the 
 gained height of Jura, the great Alps unfold themselves 
 in their chains and wreaths of incredible crest and cloud. 
 
 8. Unhappily, during all the earliest and usefullest 
 
IV. GIULIETTA. 89 
 
 years of such travelling, I had no thought of ever taking 
 up botany as a study ; feeling well that even geology, 
 which was antecedent to painting with me, could not be 
 followed out iii connection with art but under strict 
 limit.-, and with sore shortcomings. It has only been 
 the later discovery of the uselessness of old scientific 
 botany, and the abominableness of new, as an element 
 of education for youth ; and my certainty that a true 
 knowledge of their native Flora was meant by Heaven 
 to be one of the first heart-possessions of every happy 
 boy and girl in flower-bearing lands, that have compelled 
 me to gather into system my fading memories, and wan- 
 dering thoughts.* And of course in the diaries written 
 at places of which I now want chiefly the details of the 
 Flora, I find none ; and in this instance of the milkwort, 
 whose name . I was first told by the Chamouni guide, 
 Joseph Couttet, then walking with me on the unperilous 
 turf of the first rise of the Yosges, west of Strasburg, 
 and rebuking me indignantly for my complaint that, 
 being then thirty-seven years old, and not yet able to 
 draw the great plain and distant spire, it was of no use 
 trying in the poor remainder of life to do anything seri- 
 ous, then, and there, I say, for the first time examining 
 the strange little flower, and always associating it, since, 
 with the limestone crags of Alsace and Burgundy, I 
 
 * I deliberately, not garrulously, allow more autobiography in 
 ' Proserpina ' than is becoming, because I know not how far I may be 
 permitted to carry on that which was begun in ' Fors.' 
 
90 PROSERPINA. 
 
 don't find a single note of its preferences or antipathies 
 in other districts, and cannot say a word about the soil it 
 chooses, or the height it ventures, or the familiarities to 
 which it condescends, on the Alps or Apennines. 
 
 9. But one thing I have ascertained of it, lately at 
 Brantwood, that it is capricious and fastidious beyond 
 any other little blossom I know of. In laying out the 
 rock garden, most of the terrace sides were trusted to 
 remnants of the natural slope, propped by fragments of 
 stone, among which nearly every other wild flower that 
 likes sun and air, is glad sometimes to root itself. But 
 at the top of all, one terrace was brought to mathemati- 
 cally true level of surface, and slope of side, and turfed 
 with delicately chosen and adjusted sods, meant to be kept 
 duly trim by the scythe. And only on this terrace does 
 the Gmlietta choose to show herself, and even there, 
 not in any consistent places, but gleaming out here in 
 one year, there in another, like little bits of unexpected 
 sky through cloud ; and entirely refusing to allow either 
 bank or terrace to be mown the least trim during her 
 time of disport there. So spared and indulged, there 
 are no more wayward things in all the woods or wilds ; 
 no more delicate and perfect things to be brought up by 
 watch through day and night, than her recumbent clus- 
 ters, trickling, sometimes almost gushing through the 
 grass, and meeting in tiny pools of flawless blue. 
 
 10. I will not attempt at present to arrange the varie- 
 ties of the Giulietta, for I find that all the larger and 
 
 
IV. GIULIETTA. 91 
 
 presumably characteristic forms belong to the Cape ; and 
 only since Mr. Fronde came back from his African ex- 
 plorings have I been able to get any clear idea of the 
 brilliancy and associated infinitude of the Cape flowers. 
 If I could but write down the substance of what he has 
 told me, in the course of a chat or two, which have been 
 among the best privileges of my recent stay in London, 
 (prolonged as it has been by recurrence of illness,) it 
 would be a better summary of what should be generally 
 known in the natural history of southern plants than I 
 could glean from fifty volumes of horticultural botany. 
 In the meantime, everything being again thrown out of 
 gear by the aforesaid illness, I must let this piece of 
 4 Proserpina ' break off, as most of my work does and as 
 perhaps all of it may soon do leaving only suggestion 
 for the happier research of the students who trust me 
 thus far. 
 
 11. Some essential points respecting the flower I shall 
 note, however, before ending. There is one large and 
 frequent species of it of which the flowers are delicately 
 yellow, touched with tawny red, forming one of the chief 
 elements of wild foreground vegetation in the healthy 
 districts of hard Alpine limestone.* This is, I believe, 
 
 * In present Botany, Polygala Chamaebuxus ; C. 316 : or, in Eng- 
 lish, Much Milk Ground-box. It is not, as matters usually go, a name 
 to be ill thought of, as it really contains three ideas ; and the plant 
 does, without doubt, somewhat resemble box, and grows on the 
 ground; far more fitly called 'ground -box' than the Veronica 
 
92 PROSERPIXA. 
 
 the only European type of the large Cape varieties, in all 
 of which, judging from such plates as have been accessible 
 to me, the crests or fringes of the lower petal are less 
 conspicuous 4han in the smaller species; and the flower 
 almost takes the aspect of a broom-blossom or pease- 
 blossom. In the smaller European varieties, the white 
 fringes of the lower petal are the most important and 
 characteristic part of the flower, and they are, among 
 European wild flowers, absolutely without any likeness 
 of associated structure. The fringes or crests which, 
 towards the origin of petals, so often give a frosted or 
 gemmed appearance to the centres of flowers, are here 
 thrown to the extremity of the petal, and suggest an al- 
 most coralline structure of blossom, which in no other 
 instance whatever has been imitated, still less carried out 
 into its conceivable varieties of form. How many such 
 varieties might have been produced if these fringes of the 
 Giulietta, or those already alluded to of Lucia nivea, had 
 been repeated and enlarged ; as the type, once adopted 
 for complex bloom in the thistle-head, is multiplied in 
 the innumerable gradations of thistle, teasel, hawk weed, 
 and aster ! We might have had flowers edged with lace 
 finer than was ever woven by mortal fingers, or tasselled 
 
 * ground- oak.' I want to find a pretty name for it in connection with 
 Savoy or Dauphine, where it indicates, as above stated, (he healthy 
 districts of hard limestone. I do not remember it as ever occurring 
 among the dark and moist shales of the inner mountain ranges, which 
 at once confine and pollute the air. 
 
IV. GIULIETTA. 93 
 
 and braided with fretwork of silver, never tarnished or 
 hoarfrost that grew brighter in the sun. But it was not 
 to be, and after a few hints of what might be done in 
 this kind, the Fate, or Folly, or, on recent theories, the 
 extreme fitness and consequent survival, of the Thistles 
 and Dandelions, entirely drives the fringed Lucias and 
 blue-flushing niilkworts out of common human neigh- 
 bourhood, to live recluse lives with the memories of the 
 abbots of Cluny, and pastors of Piedmont. 
 
 12. I have called the Giulietta * \Aue-flushing ^ because 
 it is one of the group of exquisite flowers which at the 
 time of their own blossoming, breathe their colour into 
 the surrounding leaves and supporting stem. Yery not- 
 ably the Grape hyacinth and Jura hyacinth, and some 
 of the Yestals, empurpling all their green leaves even 
 to the ground: a quite distinct nature in the flower, ob- 
 serve, this possession of a power to kindle the leaf and 
 stem with its own passion, from that of the heaths, roses, 
 or lilies, where the determined bracts or calices assert 
 themselves in opposition to the blossom, as little pine- 
 leaves, or mosses, or brown-paper packages, and the like. 
 
 13. The Giulietta, however, is again entirely separate 
 from the other leaf-flushing blossoms, in that, after the 
 two green leaves next the flower have glowed with its 
 blue, while it lived, they do not fade or waste with it, but 
 return to their own former green simplicity, and close 
 over it to protect the seed. I only know this to be the 
 case with the Giulietta Regina ; but suppose it to be 
 
94 PROSERPINA. 
 
 (with variety of course in the colours) a condition in 
 other species, though of course nothing is ever said of 
 it in the botanical accounts of them. I gather, however, 
 from Curtis's careful drawings that the prevailing colour 
 of the Cape species is purple, thus justifying still further 
 my placing them among the Cytherides ; and I am con- 
 tent to take the descriptive epithets at present given 
 them, for the following five of this southern group, hop- 
 ing that they may be explained for me afterwards by 
 helpful friends. 
 
 14. Bracteolata, C. 345. 
 Oppositifolia, C. 492. 
 Speciosa, C. 1790. 
 
 These three all purple, and scarcely distinguishable from 
 sweet pease-blossom, only smaller. 
 
 Stipulacea, C. 1715. Small, and very beautiful, lilac 
 and purple, with a leaf and mode of growth like rose- 
 mary. The " Foxtail " milkwort, whose name I don't ac- 
 cept, C. 1006, is intermediate between this and the next 
 species. 
 
 15. Mixta, C. 1714. I don't see what mingling is 
 meant, except that it is just like Erica tetralix in the 
 leaf, only, apparently, having little four-petalled pinks 
 for blossoms. This appearance is thus botanical ly ex- 
 plained. I do not myself understand the description, 
 but copy it, thinking it may be of use to somebody. 
 * The apex of the carina is expanded into a two-lobed 
 plain petal, the lobes of which are emarginate. This ap- 
 
IV. GIULIETTA. 95 
 
 pendix is of a bright rose colour, and forms the principal 
 pai t of the flower." The describer relaxes, or relapses, 
 into common language so far as to add that ' this appen- 
 dix' "dispersed among the green foliage in every part 
 of the shrub, gives it a pretty lively appearance." 
 
 Perhaps this may also be worth extracting. 
 
 " Carina, deeply channeled, of a saturated purple with- 
 in, sides folded together, so as to include and firmly 
 embrace the style and stamens, which, when arrived at 
 maturity, upon being moved, escape elastically from their 
 confinement, and strike against the two erect petals or 
 alae by which the pollen is dispersed. 
 
 " Stem shrubby, with long flexile branches." (Length 
 or height not told. I imagine like an ordinary heath's.) 
 
 The terra 'carina,' occurring twice in the above descrip- 
 tion, is peculiar to the structure of the pease and milk- 
 worts; we will examine it afterwards. The European 
 varieties of the miikwort, except the chamaebuxus, are 
 all minute, and, their ordinary epithets being at least 
 inoffensive, I give them for reference till we find prettier 
 ones ; altering only the Calcarea, because we could not 
 have a < Chalk Juliet,' and two varieties of the Eegina, 
 changed for reason good her name, according to the 
 last modern refinements of grace and ease in pronuncia- 
 tion, being Eu-vularis, var. genuina ! My readers may 
 more happily remember her and her sister as follows : 
 
96 PROSERPINA. 
 
 16. (i.) Giulietta Eegina. Pure blue. The same in 
 colour, form, and size, throughout Europe. 
 
 (n.) Giulietta Soror-Reginse, Pale, reddish-blue 
 or white in the flower, and smaller in the 
 leaf, otherwise like the Regina. 
 
 (in.) Giulietta Depressa. The smallest of those I 
 can find drawings of. Flowers, blue ; lilac 
 in the fringe, and no bigger than pins' 
 heads ; the leaves quite gem-like in minute- 
 ness and order. 
 
 (iv.) Giulietta Cisterciana. Its present name, f Cal- 
 carea,' is meant, in botanic Latin, to express 
 its growth on limestone or chalk moun- 
 tains. But we might as well call the South 
 Down sheep, Calcareous mutton. My epi- 
 thet will rightly associate it with the Bur- 
 gundian hills round Cluny and Citeanx. 
 Its ground leaves are much larger than 
 those of the Depressa ; the flower a little 
 larger, but very pale. 
 
 (v.) Giulietta Austriaca. Pink, and very lovely, 
 with bold cluster of ground leaves, but it- 
 self minute almost dwarf. Called ' small 
 bitter milkwort ' by S. How far distinct 
 from the next following one, Norwegian, 
 is not told. 
 
IV. G I U LI ETTA. 97 
 
 The above five kinds are given by Sow- 
 
 erby as British, but I have never found the 
 
 Austriaca myself, 
 (vi.) Giulietta Amara. Xorwegian. Very quaint 
 
 in blossom outline, like a little blue rabbit 
 
 with long ears. D. 1169. 
 
 IT. Xobody tells me why either this last or No. 5 have 
 been called bitter ; and Gerarde's five kinds are distin- 
 guished only by colour blue, red, white, purple, and 
 "the dark, of an overworn ill favoured colour, which 
 maketh it to differ from all others of his kind." I find 
 no account of this ill-favoured one elsewhere. The white 
 is my Soror Regiuae ; the red must be the Austriaca; but 
 the purple and overworn ones are perhaps now overworn 
 indeed. All of them must have been more common in 
 Gerarde's time than now, for he goes on to say " Mi 1k- 
 woort is called Avibarualis flos* so called because it doth 
 specially flourish in the Crosse or Gang-weeke, or Roga- 
 tion-weeke, of which flowers, the maidens which use in 
 the countries to walk the procession do make themselves 
 garlands and nosegaies, in English we may call it Crosse 
 flower, Gang flower, Rogation flower, and Milk-woort." 
 
 18. Above, at page 197, vol. i., in first arranging the 
 Cythericlcs, I too hastily concluded that the ascription to 
 this plant of helpfulness to nursing mothers was 'more 
 than ordinarily false " ; thinking that its rarity could 
 never have allowed it to be fairly tried. If indeed true, 
 
 or in any degree true, the flower has the best right of all 
 
 7 
 
98 PUOSEIIPINA. 
 
 to be classed with the Cytherides, and we might have as 
 much of it for beauty and for service as we choose, if we 
 only took half the pains to garnish our summer gardens 
 with living and life-giving blossom, that we do to garnish 
 our winter gluttonies with dying and useless ones. 
 
 19. I have said nothing of root, or fruit, or seed, hav- 
 ing never had the hardness of heart to pull up a milkwort 
 cluster nor the chance of watching one in seed : The 
 pretty thing vanishes as it comes, like the blue sky of 
 April, and leaves no sign of itself that 1 ever found. 
 The botanists tell me that its fruit " dehisces loculicidally," 
 which I suppose is botanic for " splits like boxes," (but 
 boxes shouldn't split, and didn't, as we used to make and 
 handle them before railways). Out of the split boxes 
 fall seeds too few ; and, as aforesaid, the plant never 
 seems to grow -again in the same spot. I should thank- 
 fully receive any notes from friends happy enough to 
 live near milkwort banks, on the manner of its nativity. 
 
 20. Meanwhile, the Thistle, and the Nettle, and the 
 Dock, and the Dandelion are cared for in their genera- 
 tions by the finest arts of Providence, shall we say ? or 
 of the spirits appointed to punish our own want of Pro- 
 vidence ? May I ask the reader to look back to the 
 seventh chapter of the first volume, for it contains sug- 
 gestions of thoughts which came to me at a time of very 
 earnest and faithful inquiry, set down, I now see too 
 shortly, under the press of reading they involved, but 
 intelligible enough if they are read as slowly as they were 
 
XI. 
 States of Adversity. 
 
IV. GIULIETTA. 99 
 
 
 
 written, and especially note the paragraph of summary of 
 p. 121 on the power of the Earth Mother, as Mother, and 
 >7ye ; watching and rewarding the conditions which 
 induce adversity and prosperity in the kingdoms of men : 
 comparing with it carefully the close of the fourth chap- 
 ter, p. So,* which contains, for the now recklessly mul- 
 tiplying classes of artists and colonists, truths essential 
 to their skill, and inexorable upon their labour. 
 
 21. The pen-drawing facsimiled by Mr. Allen with 
 more than his usual care in the frontispiece to this num- 
 ber of ' Proserpina/ was one of many executed during 
 the investigation of the schools of Gothic (German, and 
 later French), which founded their minor ornamentation 
 on the serration of the thistle leaf, as the Greeks on that 
 of the Acanthus, but with a consequent, and often mor- 
 bid, love of thorny points, and insistance upon jagged or 
 knotted intricacies of stubborn vegetation, which is con- 
 nected in a deeply mysterious way with the gloomier 
 forms of Catholic asceticism. f 
 
 * Which, with the following page, is the summary of many chap- 
 ters of ' Modern Painters : ' and of the aims kept in view throughout 
 ' Muncra Pulveris.' The three kinds of Desert specified of Rccd, 
 Sand, and Rock should be kept in mind as exhaustively including 
 the states of the earth neglected by man. For instance of a Reed 
 desert, produced merely by his neglect, see Sir Samuel Baker's ac- 
 count of the choking up of the bed of the White Nile. Of the sand 
 Sir F. Palgrave's journey from the Djowf to Havel, vol. i., p. 92. 
 
 f This subject is first entered on in the ' Seven Lamps,' and carried 
 forward in the final chapters of ' Modern Painters,' to the point wheie 
 
100 PROSERPINA. 
 
 4 
 
 22. But also, in beginning c Proserpina,' I intended to 
 give many illustrations of the light and shade of fore- 
 ground leaves belonging to the nobler groups of thistles, 
 because I thought they had been neglected by ordinary 
 botanical draughtsmen ; not knowing at that time either 
 the original drawings at Oxford for the ' Flora Grseca,' 
 or the nobly engraved plates executed in the close of the 
 last century for the ' Flora Danica ' and ' Flora Londin- 
 ensis.' The latter is in the most difficult portraiture of 
 the larger plants, even the more wonderful of the two ; 
 and had I seen the miracles of skill, patience, and faith- 
 ful study which are collected in the first and second 
 volumes, published in 1777 and 1798, I believe my own 
 work would never have been undertaken.* Such as it 
 is, however, I may still, health being granted me, per- 
 severe in it ; for my own leaf and branch studies express 
 conditions of shade which even these most exquisite 
 botanical plates ignore ; and exemplify uses of the pen 
 and pencil which cannot be learned from the inimitable 
 fineness of line engraving. The frontispiece to this num- 
 ber, for instance, (a seeding head of the commonest field- 
 thistle of our London suburbs,) copied with a steel pen on 
 smooth grey paper, and the drawing softly touched with 
 
 I hope to take it up for conclusion, in the sections of ' Our Fathers 
 have told us ' devoted to the history of the fourteenth century. 
 
 * See in the first volume, the plates of Sonchus Arvensis and Tus- 
 silago Petasites ; in the second, Carduus torncntosus and Picris 
 Echioides. 
 
IV. GIUL1ETTA. 101 
 
 white on the nearer thorns, may well surpass the effect of 
 the plate. 
 
 L ; .). In the following number of ' Proserpina ' I have 
 been tempted to follow, with more minute notice than 
 usual, the ' conditions of adversity ' which, as they fret the 
 thistle tribe into jagged malice, have humbled the beauty 
 of the great domestic group of the Yestals into confused 
 likenesses of the Dragonweed and Nettle : but I feel 
 every hour more and more the necessity of separating 
 the treatment of subjects in 'Proserpina' from the mi- 
 croscopic curiosities of recent botanic illustration, nor 
 shall this work close, if my strength hold, without fulfil- 
 ling in some sort, the effort begun long ago in ' Modern 
 Painters,' to interpret the grace of the larger blossoming 
 trees, and the mysteries of leafy form which clothe the 
 Swiss precipice with gentleness, and colour with softest 
 azure the rich horizons of England and Italy. 
 
CHAPTEK V. 
 
 BRUNELLA. 
 
 1. IT ought to have been added to the statements of 
 general law in irregular flowers, in Chapter I. of this 
 volume, 6, that if the petals, while brought into rela- 
 tions of inequality, still retain their perfect petal form, 
 and whether broad or narrow, extended or reduced, re- 
 main clearly leaves, as in the pansy, pea, or azalea, and 
 assurrfe no grotesque or obscure outline, the flower, 
 though injured, is not to be thought of as corrupted or 
 misled. But if any of the petals lose their definite char- 
 acter as such, and become swollen, solidified, stiffened, 
 or strained into any other form or function than that of 
 petals, the flower is to be looked upon as affected by 
 some kind o.f constant evil influence ; and, so far as we 
 conceive of any spiritual power being concerned in the 
 protection or affliction of the inferior orders of creatures, 
 it will be felt to bear the aspect of possession by, or pol- 
 lution by, a more or less degraded Spirit.* 
 
 2. I have already enough spoken of the special mani- 
 
 * For the sense in which this word is used throughout my writings, 
 see the definition of it in the 52nd paragraph of the ' Queen of the 
 Air/ comparing with respect to its office in plants, 59-60. 
 
V. BRUXELLA. 103 
 
 festation of this character in the orders Contorta and 
 Satyrium. vol. i., p. 91, and the reader will find the 
 parallel aspects of the Draconidae dwelt upon at length 
 in the 86th and 87th paragraphs of the * Queen of the 
 Air,' where also their relation to the labiate group is 
 touched upon. But I am far more embarrassed by the 
 symbolism of that group which I called ' Vestales,' from 
 their especially domestic character and their serviceable 
 purity ; but which may be, with more convenience per- 
 haps, simply recognizable as 4 Menthae.' 
 
 3. These are, to our northern countries, what the spice- 
 bearing trees are in the tropics ; our thyme, lavender, 
 mint, marjoram, and their like, separating themselves 
 not less in the health giving or strengthening character 
 of their scent from the flowers more or less enervating in 
 perfume, as the rose, orange, and violet, than in their 
 humble colours and forms from the grace and splendour 
 of those higher tribes ; thus allowing themselves to be 
 summed under the general word ' balm' more truly than 
 the balsams from which the word is derived. Giving 
 the most pure and healing powers to the air around 
 them ; with a comfort of warmth also, being mostly in 
 dry places, and forming sweet carpets and close turf; 
 but only to be rightly enjoyed in the open air, or indoors 
 when dried ; not tempting any one to luxury, nor ex- 
 pressive of any kind of exultation. Brides do not deck 
 themselves with thyme, nor do we wreathe triumphal 
 arches with mint. 
 
104 PKOSERPINA. 
 
 4. It is most notable, also, farther, that none of these 
 flowers have any extreme beauty in colour. The blue 
 sage is the only one of vivid hue at all ; and we never 
 think of it as for a moment comparable to the violet or 
 bluebell : thyme is unnoticed beside heath, and many of 
 the other purple varieties of the group are almost dark 
 and sad coloured among the flowers of summer; while, 
 so far from gaining beauty on closer looking, there is 
 scarcely a blossom of them which is not more or less 
 grotesque, even to ugliness, in outline ; and so hooded or 
 lappeted as to look at iirst like some imperfect form of 
 snapdragon : for the most part spotted also, wrinkled as 
 if by old age or decay, cleft or torn, as if by violence, 
 and springing out of calices which, in their clustering 
 spines, embody the general roughness of the plant. 
 
 5. I take at once for example, lest the reader should 
 think me unkind or intemperate in my description, a 
 flower very dear and precious to me ; and at this lime 
 my chief comfort in field walks. For, now, the reign 
 of all the sweet reginas of the spring is over the reign 
 of the silvia and anemone, of viola and veronica; and at 
 last, and this year abdicated under tyrannous storm,* the 
 reign, of the rose. And the last foxglove-bells are nearly 
 fallen ; and over all my fields and by the brooksides are 
 coming up the burdock, and the coarse and vainly white 
 aster, and the black knapweeds ; and there is only one 
 
 * Written in 1880. 
 
V. BKUNELLA. 105 
 
 flower left to love among the grass, the soft, warm- 
 scented Erunelle. 
 
 6. Prunell, or Bruncll Gerarde calls it, and Brunella, 
 rightly and authoritatively, Tournefort ; Prunella, care- 
 lessly, Linnaeus, and idly following him, the moderns, 
 casting out all the meaning and help of its name of 
 which presently. Selfe-heale, Gerarde and Gray call it, 
 in English meaning that who has this plant needs no 
 physician. 
 
 7. As I look at it, close beside me, it seems as if it 
 would reprove me for what I have just said of the pov- 
 erty of colour in its tribe ; for the most glowing of vio- 
 lets could not be lovelier than each fine purple gleam of 
 its hooded blossoms. But their flush is broken and op- 
 pressed by the dark calices out of which they spring, and 
 their utmost power in the field is only of a saddened 
 amethystine lustre, subdued with furry brown. And 
 what is worst in the victory of the darker colour is the 
 disorder of the scattered blossoms ; of all flowers I know, 
 this is the strangest, in the way that here and there, only 
 in their cluster, its bells rise or remain, and it always 
 looks as if half of them had been shaken off, and the top 
 of the cluster broken short away altogether. 
 
 8. We must never lose hold of the principle that 
 every flower is meant to be seen by human creatures 
 with human eyes, as by spiders with spider eyes. But 
 as the painter may sometimes play the spider, and weave 
 a mesh to entrap the heart, so the beholder may play the 
 
106 PROSERPINA. 
 
 spider, when there are meshes to be disentangled that 
 have entrapped his mind. I take my lens, therefore to 
 the little wonder of a brown wasps' nest with blue-winged 
 wasps in it, and perceive therewith the following par- 
 ticulars. 
 
 9. First, that the blue of the petals is indeed pure and 
 lovely, and a little crystalline in texture ; but that the 
 form and setting of them is grotesque beyond all won- 
 der; the two uppermost joined being like an old fash- 
 ioned and enormous hood or bonnet, and the lower one 
 projecting far out in the shape of a cup or cauldron, 
 torn deep at the edges into a kind of fringe. 
 
 Looking more closely still, I perceive there is a cluster 
 of stiff white hairs, almost bristles, on the top of the 
 hood ; for no imaginable purpose of use or decoration 
 any more than a hearth-brush put for a helmet-crest, 
 and that, as we put the flower full in front, the lower 
 petal begins to look like some threatening viperine or 
 shark-like jaw, edged with ghastly teeth, and yet more, 
 that the hollow within begins to suggest a resemblance 
 to an open throat in which there are two projections 
 where the lower petal joins the lateral ones, almost ex- 
 actly like swollen glands. 
 
 I believe it was this resemblance, inevitable to any 
 careful and close observer, which first suggested the use 
 of the plant in throat diseases to physicians ; guided, as 
 in those first days of pharmacy, chiefly by imagination. 
 Then the German name for one of the most fatal of 
 
V. BRUtfELLA. 107 
 
 throat affections, Branne, extended itself into the first 
 name of the plant, Brunelle. 
 
 10. The truth of all popular traditions as to the heal- 
 ing power of herbs will he tried impartially as soon as 
 men again desire to lead healthy lives ; but I shall not in 
 Proserpina' retain any of the names of their gathered 
 and dead or distilled substance, but name them always 
 from the characters of their life. I retain, however, for 
 this plant its name Brunella, Fr. Brunelle, because we 
 may ourselves understand it as a derivation from Brune ; 
 and I bring it here before the reader's attention as giving 
 him a perfectly instructive general type of the kind of 
 degradation which takes place in the forms of flowers 
 under more or less malefic influence, causing distortion 
 and disguise of their floral structure. Thus it is not the 
 normal character of a flower petal to have a cluster of 
 bristles growing out of the middle of it, nor to be jagged at 
 the edge into the likeness of a fanged fish's jaw, nor to be 
 swollen or pouted into the likeness of a diseased gland in 
 an animal's throat. A really uncorrupted flower suggests 
 none but delightful images, and is like nothing but itself. 
 
 11. I find that in the year 1719, Tournefort defined, 
 with exactitude which has rendered the definition author- 
 itative for all time, the tribe to which this Brownie 
 flower belongs, constituting them his fourth class, and 
 describing them in terms even more depreciatingly im- 
 aginative than any I have ventured to use myself. I 
 translate the passage ^voL i., p. 177) : 
 
108 PROSERPINA. 
 
 12. " The name of Labiate flower is given to a single- 
 petaled flower which, beneath, is attenuated into a tube, 
 and above is expanded into a lip, which is either single 
 or double. It is proper to a labiate flower, first, that 
 it has a one-leaved calyx (at calycem habeat unifolium\ 
 for the most part tubulated, or reminding one of a paper 
 hood (cucullum papyraceum) ; and, secondly, that its 
 pistil ripens into a fruit consisting of four seeds, which 
 ripen in the calyx itself, as if in their own seed vessel, 
 by which a labiate flower is distinguished from a per- 
 sonate one, whose pistil becomes a capsule far divided 
 from the calyx (a calyce longe divisam). And a labiate 
 flower differs from rotate, or bell-shaped flowers, which 
 have four seeds, in that the lips of a labiate flower have 
 a gape like the face of a goblin, or ludicrous mask, emu- 
 lous of animal form." 
 
 13. This class is then divided into four sections. 
 
 In the first, the upper lip is helmeted, or hooked 
 "galeatum est, vel falcatum," 
 
 In the second, the upper lip is excavated like a spoon 
 " cochlearis in star est excavatum." 
 
 In the third the upper lip is erect. 
 
 And in the fourth there is no upper lip at all. 
 
 The reader will, I hope, forgive me for at once reject- 
 ing a classification of lipped plants into three classes that 
 have lips, and one that has none, and in which the lips 
 of those that have got any, are like helmets and spoons. 
 
 Linnaeus, in 1758, grouped the family into two divi- 
 
V. BRUNELLA. 109 
 
 sions, by the form of the calyx, (five-fold or two-fold), 
 and then went into the wildest confusion in distinction 
 of species, sometimes by the form of corolla, sometimes 
 bv that of calyx, sometimes by that of the filaments, 
 sometimes by that of the stigma, and sometimes by that 
 of the seed. As, for instance, thyme is to be identified 
 by the calyx having hairs in its throat, dead nettle by 
 having bristles in its mouth, lion's tail by having bones 
 in its anthers (antherae punctis osseis adspersae), and 
 teucrium by having its upper lip cut in two ! 
 
 14. St. Hilaire, in 1805, divides again into four sec- 
 tions, but as three of these depend on form of corolla, 
 and the fourth on abortion of stamens, the reader may 
 conclude practically, that logical division of the family 
 is impossible, and that all he can do, or that there is the 
 smallest occasion for his doing, is first to understand the 
 typical structure thoroughly, and then to know a certain 
 number of forms accurately, grouping the others round 
 them at convenient distances ; and, finally, to attach to 
 their known forms such simple names as may be utter- 
 able by children, and memorable by old people, with 
 more ease and benefit than, the ' Galeopsis Eu-te-trahit,' 
 ' Lamium Galeobdalon,' or ' Scutellaria Galericulata,' and 
 the like, of modern botany. But to do this rightly, I 
 must review and amplify some of my former classifica- 
 tion, which it will be advisable to do in a separate 
 chapter. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 MONACHA. 
 
 1. IT is not a little vexing to me, in looking over the 
 very little I have got done of my planned Systema 
 Proserpinse, to discover a grave mistake in the specifica- 
 tions of Veronica. It is Veronica chamsedrys, not offi- 
 cinalis, which is our proper English Speedwell, and 
 Welsh Fluellen ; and all the eighth paragraph, p. 74, 
 properly applies to that. Veronica officinalis is an ex- 
 tremely small flower rising on vertical stems out of re- 
 cumbent leaves; and the drawing of it in the Flora 
 Danica, which I mistook for a stunted northern state, is 
 quite true of the English species,* except that it does 
 not express the recumbent action of the leaves. The 
 proper representation of ground-leafage has never yet 
 been attempted in any botanical work whatever, and as, 
 in recumbent plants, their grouping and action can only 
 be seen from above, the plates of them should always 
 have a dark and rugged background, not only to indicate 
 the position of the eye, but to relieve the forms of the 
 
 * The plate of Chamaedrys, D. 448, is also quite right, and not 
 1 too tall and weedlike,' as I have called it at p. 72. 
 
UK I 'M 
 
 VI. HONACHAV. 4JJFQ HI 
 
 leaves as they were intended to be shown. I will try to 
 give some examples in the course of this year. 
 
 2. I find also, sorrowfully, that the references are 
 wrong in three, if not more, places in that chapter. S. 
 9T1 and 972 should be transposed in p. 72. S. 294 in 
 p. 74 should be 981. D. 407 should be inserted after 
 Peregrina, in p. 76 ; and 203, in fourth line from bottom 
 of p. 78, should be 903. I wish it were likely that these 
 errors had been corrected by my readers, the rarity of 
 the Flora Danica making at present my references virtu- 
 ally useless : but I hope in time that our public institutes 
 will possess themselves of copies : still more do I hope 
 that some book of the kind will be undertaken by Eng- 
 lish artists and engravers, which shall be worthy of our 
 own country. 
 
 3. Farther, I get into confusion by not always re- 
 membering my own nomenclature, and have allowed 
 i Gentianoides ' to remain, for "No. 16, though I banish 
 Gentian. It will be far better to call this eastern moun- 
 tain species ' Olympica ' : according to Sibthorpe's local- 
 ization, " in summa parte, nive soluta, montis Olympi 
 Bithyni,'' and the rather that Curtis's plate above re- 
 ferred to shows it in luxuriance to be liker an asphodel 
 than a gentian. 
 
 4. I have also perhaps done wrong in considering 
 Veronica polita and agrestis as only varieties, in No. 3. 
 Xo author tells me why the first is called polite, but its 
 blue seems more intense than that of agrestis; and as it 
 
112 PROSERPINA. 
 
 is above described with attention, vol. i., p. 75, as an ex- 
 ample of precision in flower- form, we may as well re- 
 tain it in our list here. It will be therefore our twent} r - 
 iirst variety, it is London's fifty-ninth and last. He 
 translates ( polita ' simply 'polished,' which is nonsense. 
 I can think of nothing to call it but 'dainty,' and will 
 leave it at present unchristened. 
 
 5. Lastly. I can't think why I omitted Y. Hum if lisa, 
 S. 979, which seems to be quite one of the most beauti- 
 ful of the family a mountain flower also, and one which 
 I ought to find here; but hitherto I know only among 
 the mantlings of the ground, Y. thyrnifolia and offici- 
 nalis. All these, however, agree in the extreme pretti- 
 ness and grace of their crowded leafage, the officinalis, 
 of which the leaves are shown much too coarsely serrated 
 in S. 984, forming carpets of finished embroidery which 
 I have never yet rightly examined, because I mistook 
 them for St. John's wort. They are of a beautiful 
 pointed oval form, serrated so finely that they seem 
 smooth in distant effect, and covered with equally invisi- 
 ble hairs, which seem to collect towards the edge in the 
 variety Hirsuta, S. 985. 
 
 For the present, I should like the reader to group the 
 three flowers, S. 979, 984, 985, under the general name 
 of Humifusa, and to distinguish them by a third epithet, 
 which I allow myself when in difficulties, thus: 
 
 Y. Humifusa, caerulea, the beautiful blue one, which 
 resembles Spicata. 
 
VI. MONACHA. 113 
 
 V. Humifusa, officinalis, and, 
 
 ~Y. Humifusa, liirsuta: the last seems to me extremely 
 interesting, and I hope to find it and study it 
 carefully. 
 
 I>y this arrangement we shall have only twenty-one 
 species to remember: the one which chiefly decorates 
 the ground again dividing into the above three. 
 
 6. These matters being set right, I pass to the busi- 
 ness in hand, which is to define as far as possible the 
 subtle relations between the Veronicas and Draconidse, 
 and again between these and the tribe at present called 
 labiate. In my classification above, vol. i., p. 200, the 
 Draconidse include the Nightshades; but this was an 
 oversight. Atropa belongs properly to the following 
 class, Moiridse; and my Draconids are intended to in- 
 clude only the two great families of Personate and Rin- 
 gent flowers, which in some degree resemble the head of 
 an animal: the representative one being what we call 
 snapdragon,' but the French, careless of its snapping 
 power, calf's muzzle "Muflier, muflande, or muffle de 
 Yeau." Rousseau, 'Lettres,' p. 19. 
 
 7. As I examine his careful and sensible plates of it, 
 I chance also on a bit of his text, which, extremely wise 
 and generally useful, I translate forthwith : 
 
 " I understand, my dear, that one is vexed to take so 
 much trouble without learning the names of the plants 
 one examines ; but I confess to you in good faith that 
 it never entered into my plan to spare you this little 
 
114 PROSERPINA. 
 
 chagrin. One pretends that Botany is nothing but a 
 science of words, which only exercises the memory, and 
 only teaches how to give plants names. For me, I know 
 no rational study which is only a science of words: and 
 to which of the two, I pray you, shall I grant the name 
 of botanist, to him who knows how to spit out a name 
 or a phrase at the sight of a plant, without knowing any- 
 thing of its structure, or to him who, knowing that struc- 
 ture very well, is ignorant nevertheless of the very arbi- 
 trary name that one gives to the plant in such and such a 
 country ? If we only gave to your children an amusing 
 occupation, we should miss the best half of our purpose, 
 which is, in amusing them, to exercise their intelligence 
 and accustom them to attention. Before teaching them 
 to name what they see, let us begin by teaching them to 
 see it. That science, forgotten in all educations, ought 
 to form the most important part of theirs. I can never 
 repeat it often enough teach them never to be satisfied 
 with words, ( k se payer de mots') and to hold themselves 
 as knowing nothing of what has reached no farther than 
 their memories." 
 
 8. E-ousseau chooses, to represent his 'Personees,' La 
 Mufflaude, la Linaire, 1'Euphraise, la Pediculaire, la 
 Crete-de-coq, 1'Orobanche, la Cimbalaire, la Yelvote, la 
 Digitale, giving plates of snapdragon, foxglove, and 
 Madonna-herb, (the Cimbalaire), and therefore including 
 my entire class of Draconidae, whether open or close 
 throated. But I propose myself to separate from them 
 
VI. MONACHA. 115 
 
 the flower which, for the present, I have called Monacha, 
 but may perhaps find hereafter a better name ; this one, 
 which is the best Latin I can find for a nun of the des- 
 ert, being given to it because all the resemblance either 
 to calf or dragon has ceased in its rosy petals, and they 
 resemble the lower ones those of the mountain thyme, 
 and the upper one a softly crimson cowl or hood. 
 
 9. This beautiful mountain flower, at present, by the 
 good grace of botanists, known as Pedicularis, from a 
 disease which it is supposed to give to sheep, is distin- 
 guished from all other Draconidae by its beautifully 
 divided leaves : while the flower itself, like, as afore- 
 said, thyme in the three lower petals, rises in the upper 
 one quite upright, and terminates in the narrow and 
 peculiar hood from which I have named it ; Monacha.' 
 
 10. Two deeper crimson spots with white centres ani- 
 mate the colour of the lower petals in our mountain kind 
 mountain or morass ; it is vilely drawn in S. 997 
 under the name of Sylvatica, translated ' Procumbent ' ! 
 As it is neither a wood flower nor a procumbent one,* 
 and as its rosy colour is rare among morass flowers, I 
 shall call it simply Monacha Rosea. 
 
 I have not the smallest notion of the meaning of the 
 
 *" Stems numerous from the crown of the root-stock, dc-cum 
 bent." S. The effect of the flower upon the ground is always of 
 an extremely upright and separate plant, never appearing in clusters, 
 or in any relation to a central root. My epithet 'rosea' does not 
 deny its botanical de- or pro-cumbency. 
 
116 PROSERPINA. 
 
 following sentence in S. : " Upper lip of corolla not 
 rostrate, with the margin on each side furnished with a 
 triangular tooth immediately below the apex, but with- 
 out any tooth below the middle." Why, or when, a lip 
 is rostrate, or has any '' tooth below the middle,' I do not 
 know; but the upper petal of the corolla is here a very 
 close gathered hood, with the style emergent downwards, 
 and the stamens all hidden and close set within. 
 
 In this action of the upper petal, and curve of the 
 style, the flower resembles the Labiates,* and is the 
 proper link between them and the Draconidse. The 
 capsule is said by S. to be oval-ovoid. As eggs always 
 are oval, I don't feel farther informed by the epithet. 
 The capsule and seed both are of entirely indescribable 
 shapes, with any number of sides very foxglove-like, 
 and inordinately large. The seeds of the entire family 
 are i ovoid-subtrigonous.' S. 
 
 11. I find only two species given as British by S., 
 namely, Sylvatica and Palustris ; but I take first for the 
 Regina, the beautiful Arctic species D. 1105, Flora 
 Suecica, 555. Hose- colon red in the stem, pale pink in 
 the flowers (corollse pallide incarnatse), the calices furry 
 against the cold, whence the present ngly name, Hirsuta. 
 Only on the highest crests of the Lapland Alps. 
 
 (2) Rosea, D. 225, there called Sylvatica, as by S., 
 presumably because " in pascuis subhumidis non rarse." 
 
 * Compare especially Galeopsis Angustifolia, D. 3031. 
 
VI. MONACHA. 117 
 
 Beautifully drawn, but, as I have described it, vigorously 
 erect, and with no decora bency whatever in any part of 
 it. Root branched, and enormous in proportion to plant, 
 and I fancy therefore must be good for something if one 
 knew it. But Gerarde, who calls the plant Red Rattle, 
 (it having indeed much in common with the Yellow 
 Rattle), says, i; It groweth in moist and moorish meadows ; 
 the herbe is not only unprofitable, but likewise hurtful, 
 and an infirmity of the meadows." 
 
 (3) Palustris, D. 2055, S. 996 scarcely any likeness 
 between the plates. " Everywhere in the meadows," 
 according to D. I leave the English name, Marsh 
 Monacha, much doubting its being more marshy than 
 others. 
 
 12. I take next (4 and 5) two northern species, Lap- 
 ponica, D. 2, and Gronlandica, D. 1166 ; the first yellow, 
 the second red, both beautiful. The Lap one has its 
 divided leaves almost united into one lovely spear-shaped 
 single leaf. The Greenland one has its red hood much 
 prolonged in front. 
 
 (6) Ramosa, also a Greenland species; yellow, very 
 delicate and beautiful. Three stems from one root, but 
 may be more or fewer, I suppose. 
 
 13. (7) Norvegica, a beautifully clustered golden 
 flower, with thick stem, D. 30, the only locality given 
 being the Dovrefeldt, "Alpina" and "Flammea" are 
 the synonyms, but I do not know it on the Alps, and it 
 is no more flame-coloured than a cowslip. 
 
118 PROSERPINA. 
 
 Both the Lapland and Norwegian flowers are drawn 
 with their stems wavy, though upright a rare and 
 pretty habit of growth. 
 
 14. (8) Suecica, D. 26, named awkwardly Sceptrum 
 Carol inum, in honour of Charles XII. It is the largest 
 of all the species drawn in D., and contrasts strikingly 
 with (4) and (5) in the strict uprightness of its stem. 
 The corolla is closed at the extremity, which is red ; 
 the body of the flower pale yellow. Grows in marshy 
 and shady woods, near Upsal. Linn., Flora Suecica, 
 553. 
 
 The many-lobed but united leaves, at the root five or 
 six inches long, are irregularly beautiful. 
 
 15. These eight species are all I can specify, having 
 no pictures of the others named by London, eleven, 
 making nineteen altogether, and I wish I could find a 
 twentieth and draw them all, but the reader may be well 
 satisfied if he clearly know these eight. The group they 
 form is an entirely distinct one, exactly intermediate 
 between the Vestals and Draconids, and cannot be rightly 
 attached to either ; for it is Draconid in structure and 
 affinity Vestal in form and I don't see how to get the 
 connection of the three families rightly expressed with- 
 out taking the Draconidse out of the groups belonging 
 to the dark Kora, and placing them next the Vestals, 
 with the Monachae between ; for indeed Linaria and 
 several other Draconid forms are entirely innocent and 
 beautiful, and even the Foxglove never does any real 
 
VI. MOXACHA. 119 
 
 mischief like hemlock, while decoratively it is one of the 
 most precious of mountain flowers. I find myself also 
 embarrassed by my name of Vestals, because of the 
 masculine groups of Basil and Thymus, and I think it 
 will be better to call them simply Menthse, and to place 
 them with the other cottage-garden plants not yet 
 classed, taking the easily remembered names Mentha, 
 Monacha, Draconida. This will leave me a blank 
 seventh place among my twelve orders at p. 194, vol. i., 
 which I think I shall fill by taking cyclamen and ana- 
 gillis out of the Primulaceae, and making a separate 
 group of them. These retouchings and changes are in- 
 evitable in a work confessedly tentative and suggestive 
 only ; but in whatever state of imperfection I may be 
 forced to leave ; Proserpina,' it will assuredly be found, 
 up to the point reached, a better foundation for the 
 knowledge of flowers in the minds of young people than 
 any hitherto adopted system of nomenclature. 
 
 16. Taking then this re-arranged group, Mentha, 
 Monacha, and Draconida, as a sufficiently natural and 
 convenient one, I will briefly give the essentially botani- 
 cal relations of the three families. 
 
 Mentha and Monacha agree in being essentially hooded 
 flowers, the upper petal more or less taking the form of 
 a cup, helmet or hood, which conceals the tops of the 
 stamens. Of the three lower petals, the lowest is almost 
 invariably the longest ; it sometimes is itself divided 
 again into two, but may be best thought of as single, and 
 
120 PROSERPINA. 
 
 with the two lateral ones, distinguished in the Mentlise 
 as the apron and the side pockets. 
 
 Plate XII. represents the most characteristic types of 
 the blossoms of Menthse, in the profile and front views, 
 all a little magnified. The upper two are white basil, 
 purple spotted growing here at Brantwood always with 
 two terminal flowers. The two middle figures are the 
 purple-spotted dead nettle, Lamium maculatum ; and 
 the two lower, thyme : but I have not been able to draw 
 these as I wanted, the perspectives of the petals being 
 too difficult, and inexplicable to the eye even in the 
 flowers themselves without continually putting them in 
 changed positions. 
 
 17. The Menthse are in their structure essentially 
 quadrate plants ; their stems are square, their leaves 
 opposite, their stamens either four or two, their seeds 
 two-carpeled. But their calices are five-sepaled, falling 
 into divisions of two and three ; and the flowers, though 
 essentially four-petaled, may divide either the upper or 
 lower petal, or both, into two lobes, and so present a six- 
 lobed outline. The entire plants, but chiefly the leaves, 
 are nearly always fragrant, and always innocent. None 
 of them sting, none prick, and none poison. 
 
 IS. The Draconids, easily recognizable by their as- 
 pect, are botanically indefinable with any clearness or 
 simplicity. The calyx may be five- or four-sepaled ; the 
 corolla, five- or four-lobed ; the stamens may be two, 
 four, four with a rudimentary fifth, or five with the two 
 
4 
 
 , 
 
 \' 
 
 
 XII. 
 
 MENTH/E. 
 Profile and Front View of Blossoms (enlarged). 
 
VI. MO^ACHA. 121 
 
 anterior ones longer than the other three ! The capsule 
 may open by two, three, or four valves, or by pores ; 
 the seeds, generally numerous, are sometimes solitary, 
 and the leaves may be alternate, opposite, or verticillate. 
 19. Thus licentious in structure, they are also doubt- 
 ful in disposition. None that I know of are fragrant, 
 few useful, many more or less malignant, and some para- 
 sitic. The following piece of a friend's letter almost 
 makes me regret my rescue of them from the dark king- 
 dom of Kora : 
 
 "... And I find that the Monacha Rosea (Red Rattle is its name, 
 besides the ugly one) is a perennial, and several of the other draconi- 
 dae, foxglove, etc. , are biennials, born this year, flowering and dying 
 next year, and the size of roots is generally proportioned to the life 
 of plants ; except when artificial cultivation develops the root special- 
 ly, as in turnips, etc. Several of the Draconidae are parasites, and 
 suck the roots of 'other plants, and have only just enough of their own 
 to catch with. The Yellow Rattle is one ; it clings to the roots of 
 the grasses and clovers, and no cultivation will make it thrive without 
 them. My authority for this last fact is Grant Allen ; but I have ob- 
 served for myself that the Yellow Rattle has very small white suck- 
 ing roots, and no earth sticking to them. The tooth worts and broom 
 rapes are Draconidae, I think, and wholly parasites. Can it be that 
 the Red Rattle is the one member of the family that has ' proper pride, 
 and is self supporting ' ? the others are mendicant orders. We had 
 what we choose to call the Dorcas flower show yesterday, and we gave, 
 as usual, prizes for wild flower bouquets. I tried to find out the lo- 
 cal names of several flowers, but they all seemed to be called ' I 
 don't know, ma'am.' I would not allow this name to suffice for the 
 red poppy, and I said ' This red flower must be called something tell 
 me what you call it ? ' A few of the audience answered ' Blind Eyes.' 
 
122 P110SEKP1NA. 
 
 Is it because they have to do with sleep that they are called Blind 
 Eyes or because they are dazzling ?" 
 
 20. I think, certainly, from the dazzling, which some- 
 times with the poppy, scarlet geranium, and nasturtium, 
 is more distinctly oppressive to the eye than a real excess 
 of light. 
 
 I will certainly not include among my rescued Dracon- 
 idse, the parasitic Lathrsea and Orobanche ; and cannot 
 yet make certain of any minor classification among those 
 which I retain, but, uniting Bartsia with Euphrasia, I 
 shall have, in the main, the three divisions Digitalis, Lin- 
 aria, Euphrasia, and probably separate the moneyworts 
 as links with Yeronica, and Ehinanthus as links with 
 Lathraea. 
 
 And as I shall certainly be unable this summer, under 
 the pressure of resumed work at Oxford, to spend time 
 in any new botanical investigations, I will rather try to 
 fulfil the promise given in the last number, to collect 
 what little I have been able hitherto to describe or ascer- 
 tain, respecting the higher modes of tree structure. 
 
CHAPTEK YIL 
 
 SCIENCE IN HER CELLS. 
 
 [The following chapter has been written six years. It was delayed 
 in order to complete the promised clearer analysis of stem-struct- 
 ure ; which, after a great deal of chopping, chipping, and peeling of 
 my oaks and birches, came to reverently hopeless pause. What is 
 here done may yet have some use in pointing out to younger students 
 how they may simplify their language, and direct their thoughts, so 
 as to attain, in due time, to reverent hope.] 
 
 1. THE most generally useful book, to myself, hither- 
 to, in such little time as I have for reading about plants, 
 has been Lindley's ' Ladies' Botany ' ; but the most rich 
 and true I have yet found in illustration, the f Histoire 
 des Plantes,' * by Louis Figuier. I should like those of 
 my readers who can afford it to buy both these books ; 
 the first named, at any rate, as I shall always refer to it 
 for structural drawings, and on points of doubtful classifi- 
 cation ; while the second contains much general knowl- 
 edge, expressed with some really human intelligence and 
 feeling ; besides some good and singularly just history 
 of botanical discovery and the men who guided it. The 
 botanists, indeed, tell me proudly, " Figuier is no author- 
 
 * Octavo : Paris, Hachettc, 1865. 
 
124 PROSERPINA. 
 
 ity." But who wants authority ! Is there nothing known 
 yet about plants, then, which can be taught to a boy or 
 girl, without referring them to an i authority ' ? 
 
 1. for my own part, care only to gather what Figuier 
 can teach concerning things visible, to any boy or girl, 
 who live within reach of a bramble hedge, or a hawthorn 
 thicket, and can find authority enough for what they are 
 told, in the sticks of them. 
 
 2. If only he would, or could, tell us clearly that much ; 
 but like other doctors, though with better meaning than 
 most, he has learned mainly to look at things with a 
 microscope, rarely with his eyes. And I am sorry to 
 see, on re-reading this chapter of my own, which is little 
 more than an endeavour to analyze and arrange the state- 
 ments contained in his second, that I have done it more 
 petulantly and unkindly than I ought ; but I can't do all 
 the work over again, now, more's the pity. I have not 
 looked at this chapter for a year, and shall be sixty be- 
 fore I know where I am ; (I find myself, instead, now, 
 sixty-four !) 
 
 3. But I stand at once partly corrected in this second 
 chapter of Figuier's, on the i Tige,' French from the 
 Latin 'Tignum,' which ' authorities ' say is again from 
 the Sanscrit, and means 'the thing hewn with an axe'; 
 anyhow it is modern French for what we are to call the 
 stem ( 12, p. 136). 
 
 " The tige," then, begins M. Louis, " is the axis of the 
 ascending system of a vegetable, and it is garnished at 
 
VIE. SCIENCE IX IIEK CELLS. 125 
 
 intervals with vital knots, (eyes,) from winch spring 
 kavrs ;md buds, disposed in a perfectly regular order. 
 The root presents nothing of the kind. This character 
 permits us always to distinguish, in the vegetable axis, 
 what belongs really to the stem, and what to the 
 root." 
 
 4. Yes ; and that is partly a new idea to me, for in 
 this power of assigning their order for the leaves, the 
 stem seems to take a royal or commandant character, and 
 cannot be merely defined as the connexion of the leaf 
 with the roots. 
 
 In it is put the spirit of determination. One cannot 
 fancy the little leaf, as it is born, determining the point 
 it will be born at : the governing stem must determine 
 that for it. Also the disorderliness of the root is to be 
 noted for a condition of its degradation, no less than its 
 love, and need, of Darkness. 
 
 Xor was I quite right (above, 15, p. 139) in calling 
 the stem itself ' spiral ' : it is itself a straight-growing 
 rod, but one which, as it grows, lays the buds of future 
 leaves round it in a spiral order, like the bas-relief on 
 Trajan's column. 
 
 I go on with Figuier: the next passage is very valua- 
 ble. 
 
 5. "The tige is the part of plants which, directed 
 into the air, supports, and gives growing power to, the 
 branches, the twigs, the leaves, and the flowers. The 
 form, strength, and direction of the tige depend on the 
 
126 PROSERPINA. 
 
 part that each plant has to play among the vast vegetable 
 population of our globe. Plants which need for their 
 life a pure and often-renewed air, are borne by a straight 
 tige, robust and tall. When they have need only of a 
 moist air, more condensed, and more rarely renewed, 
 when they have to creep on the ground or glide in thick- 
 ets, the tiges are long, flexible, and dragging. If they 
 are to float in the air, sustaining themselves on more ro- 
 bust vegetables, they are provided with flexible, slender, 
 and supple tiges." 
 
 6. Yes; but in that last sentence he loses lio"Jd*of his 
 main idea, and to me the important one, namely, the 
 connexion of the form of stem with the quality of the 
 air it requires. And that idea itself is at present vague, 
 though most valuable, to me. A strawberry creeps, with 
 a flexible stem, but requires certainly no less pure air 
 than a wood-fungus, which stands up straight. And in 
 our own hedges and woods, are the wild rose and honey- 
 suckle signs of unwholesome air ? 
 
 " And honeysuckle loved to crawl 
 Up the lone crags and ruined wall. 
 I deemed such nooks the sweetest shade 
 The sun in all his round surveyed." 
 
 It seems to me, in the nooks most haunted by honeysuckle 
 in my own wood, that the reason for its twining is a very 
 feminine one, that it likes to twine ; and that all these 
 whys and wherefores resolve themselves at last into 
 
VII. SCIENCE IX HER CELLS. 127 
 
 what a modern philosopher, of course, cannot understand 
 caprice.* 
 
 7. Farther on, Figuier, quoting St. Hilaire, tells us, 
 of the creepers in primitive forests, " Some of them 
 resemble waving ribands, others coil themselves and de- 
 scribe vast spirals ; they droop in festoons, they wind 
 hither and thither among the trees, they fling themselves 
 from one to another, and form masses of leaves and flow- 
 ers in which the observer is often at a loss to discover on 
 which plant each several blossom grows." 
 
 For all this, the real reasons will be known only when 
 human beings become reasonable. For, except a curious 
 naturalist or wistful missionary, no Christian has trodden 
 the labyrinths of delight and decay among these garlands, 
 but men who had no other thought than how to cheat 
 their savage people out of their gold, and give them gin 
 and smallpox in exchange. But, so soon as true servants 
 of Heaven shall enter these Edens, and the Spirit of God 
 enter with them, another spirit will also be breathed into 
 the physical air ; and the stinging insect, and venomous 
 snake, and poisonous tree, pass away before the power of 
 the regenerate human soul. 
 
 8. At length, on the structure of the tige, Figuier 
 begins his real work, thus: 
 
 A glance of the eye, thrown on the section of a log 
 of wood destined for warming, permits us to recognize 
 
 * See in the ninth chapter what I have been ahle, since this sentence 
 was written, to notice on the matter in question. 
 
128 PROSERPINA. 
 
 that the tige of the trees of our forests presents three 
 essential parts, which are, in going from within to with- 
 out, the pith, the wood, and the bark. The pith, (in 
 French, marrow,) forms a sort of column in the centre 
 of the woody axis. In very thick and old stems its di- 
 ameter appears very little ; and it has even for a long 
 time been supposed that the marrow ends by disappear- 
 ing altogether from the stems of old trees. But it does 
 nothing of the sort ;* and it is now ascertained, by exact 
 measures, that its diameter remains sensibly invariable^ 
 from the moment when the young woody axis begins to 
 consolidate itself, to the epoch of its most complete de- 
 . velopment." 
 
 So far, so good ; but what does he mean by the com- 
 plete development of the young woody axis? When 
 does the axis become < wooden,' and how far up the tree 
 does he call it an axis? If the stem divides into three 
 branches, which is the axis ? And is the pith in the 
 trunk no thicker than in each branch? 
 
 9. He proceeds to tell us, " The marrow is formed by 
 a reunion of cells." Yes, and so is Newgate, and so was 
 the Bastille. But what does it matter whether the mar- 
 row is made of a reunion of cells, or cellars, or walls, or 
 
 * I envy the French their generalized form of denial, ' II n'en est 
 rien.' 
 
 f ' Sensiblement invariable ; ' ' unchanged, so far as we can see,' or 
 to general sense ; microscopic and minute change not being consid- 
 ered. 
 
VII. SCIENCE IN HER CELLS. 
 
 1:29 
 
 floors, or ceilings ? I want to know what's the use of it? 
 why doesn't it grow bigger with the rest of the tree? 
 when does the tree ' consolidate itself ? when is it finally 
 consolidated ? and how can there be always marrow in it 
 when the weary frame of its age remains a mere scarred 
 tower of war with the elements, full of dust and bats? 
 c lle will tell you if only you go on patiently,' thinks 
 
 FIG. 24. 
 
 the reader. He will not! Once your modern botanist 
 gets into cells, he stays in them. Hear how he goes on ! 
 "This cell is a sort of sack; this sack is completely 
 closed ; sometimes it is empty, sometimes it" is full? 
 no, that would be unscientific simplicity: sometimes it 
 " conceals a matter in its interior." " The marrow of 
 young trees, such as it is represented in Figure 2-i (Fi- 
 guier. Figs. 38, 39, p. 42), is nothing else" (indeed !) 
 
130 PROSERPINA. 
 
 " than an aggregation of cells, which, first of spherical 
 form, have become polyhedric by their increase and mu- 
 tual compression." 
 
 10. Now these figures, 38 and 39, which profess to 
 represent this change, show us sixteen oval cells, such as 
 at A, (Fig. 24) enlarged into thirteen larger, and flattish, 
 hexagons ! B, placed at a totally different angle. 
 
 And before I can give you the figure revised with any 
 available accuracy, I must know why or how the cells are 
 enlarged, and in what direction. 
 
 Do their walls lengthen laterally when they are empty, 
 or does the ' matiere ' inside stuff them more out, (itself 
 increased from what sources ?) when they are full? In 
 either case, during this change from circle to hexagon, is 
 
 O O Z3 / 
 
 the marrow getting thicker without getting longer ? If 
 so, the change in the angle of the cells is intentional, and 
 
 ? O O * 
 
 probably is so; but the number of cells should have been 
 the same : and further, the term ' hexagonal ' can only be 
 applied to the section of a tubular cell, as in honeycomb, 
 so that the floor and ceiling of our pith cell are left un- 
 described. 
 
 1J. Having got thus much of (partly conjectural) idea 
 of the mechanical structure of marrow, here follows the 
 solitary vital, or mortal, fact in the whole business, given 
 in one crushing sentence at the close : 
 
 "The medullary tissue" (first time of using this fine 
 phrase for the marrow, why can't he say marrowy tis- 
 sue ' tissue moei lease ' ?) " appears very early struck with 
 
VII. SCIENCE IN HER CELLS. 131 
 
 atony," ( ; atonic,' want of tone.) " above all, in its cen- 
 tral parts." And so ends all he has to say for the pres- 
 ent about the marrow! and it never appears to occur to 
 him for a moment, that if indeed the noblest trees live 
 all their lives in a state of healthy and robust paralysis, 
 it is a distinction, hitherto unheard of, between vegeta- 
 bles and animals ! 
 
 12. Two pages farther on, however, (p. 45.) we get 
 more about the marrow, and of great interest, to this 
 effect, for I must abstract and complete here, instead of 
 translating. 
 
 " The marrow itself is surrounded, as the centre of an 
 electric cable is, by its guarding threads that is to say, 
 by a number of cords or threads coming between it and 
 the wood, and differing from all others in the tree. 
 
 "The entire protecting cylinder composed of them has 
 been called the "etui,' (or needle-case.) of the marrow. 
 But each of the cords which together form this etui, is 
 itself composed of an almost iniinitely delicate thread 
 twisted into a screw, like the common spring of a letter- 
 weigher or a Jack-in-the-box, but of exquisite fineness." 
 Upon this, two pages and an elaborate figure are given 
 to these 'trachees' tracheas, the French call them, 
 and we are never told the measure of them, either in di- 
 ameter or length,* and still less, the use of them ! 
 
 * Moreover, the confusion between vertical and horizontal sections 
 in pp. 46, 47, is completed by the misprint of vertical for horizontal 
 in the third line of p. 43, and of horizontal for vertical in the fifth 
 
132 PROSERPINA. 
 
 I collect, however, in my thoughts, what I have 
 learned thus far. 
 
 13. A tree stein, it seems, is a growing thing, cracked 
 outside, because its skin won't stretch, paralysed inside, 
 because its marrow won't grow, but which continues the 
 process of its life somehow, by knitted nerves without 
 any nervous energy in them, protected by spiral springs 
 without any spring in them. 
 
 Stay I am going too fast. That coiling is perhaps 
 prepared for some kind of uncoiling; and I will try if I 
 can't learn something about it from some other book 
 
 O 
 
 noticing, as I pause to think where to look, the advan- 
 tage of our English tongue in its pithy Saxon word, 
 ' pith,' separating all our ideas of vegetable structure 
 clearly from animal ; while the poor Latin and French 
 must use the entirely inaccurate words 'medulla' and 
 'moelle'; all, however, concurring in their recognition 
 of a vital power of sofne essential kind in this white cord 
 of cells: "Medulla, sive ilia vitalis anima est, ante se 
 tendit, longitudinem impellens." (Pliny, ' Of the Yine,' 
 liber X., cap. xxi.) 'Yitalis anima' yes that I ac- 
 cept; but 'longitudinem impellens,' I pause at; being 
 not at all clear, yet, myself, about any impulsive power 
 in the pith.* 
 
 line from bottom of p. 46; while Figure 45 is to me totally unintelli- 
 gible, this being, as far as can be made out by the lettering, a section 
 of a tree stem which has its marrow on the outside ! 
 
 * " Try a bit of rhubarb" (says A, who sends me a pretty drawing 
 
VII. SCIENCE IX HER CELLS. 133 
 
 11. However, 1 take tip first, and with best hope, Dr. 
 Asa Gray, who tells me (Art. 211) that pith consists of 
 parenchyma, ' which is at first gorged with sap,' hut that 
 many stems expand so rapidly that their pith is torn into 
 a mere lining or into horizontal plates; and that as the 
 stem grows older, the pith becomes dry and light, and is 
 i then of no farther use to the plant.' But of what use 
 it ever was, we are not informed ; and the Doctor makes 
 us his bow, so far as the professed article on pith goes ; 
 but, farther on, I find in his account of 4 Sap-wood,' (Art. 
 22i,) that in the germinating plantlet, the sap 'ascends 
 first through the parenchyma, especially through its cen- 
 tral portion or pith.' Whereby we are led back to our 
 old question, what sap is, and where it comes from, with 
 the now superadded question, whether the young pith is 
 a mere succulent sponge, or an active power, and con- 
 structive mechanism, nourished by the abundant sap : as 
 .Columella has it, 
 
 "Natural! enim spiritu oinne alimentum virentis quasi 
 quaedam anima, per mediillain trunci veluti per sipho- 
 nem, trahitnr in summum." * 
 
 As none of these authors make any mention of a com- 
 et rhubarb pith); but as rhubarb does not grow into wood, inappli- 
 cable to our present subject; and if we descend to annual plants, rush 
 pith is the thing to be examined. 
 
 * I am too lazy now to translate, and shall trust to the chance of 
 some remnant, among my readers, of classical study, even in modern 
 England. 
 
134 PROSERPINA. 
 
 munication between tlie cells of the pith, I conclude 
 that the sap they are filled with is taken up by them, and 
 used to construct their own thickening tissue. 
 
 15. Next, I take Balfour's ' Structural Botany,' and by 
 his index, under the word ' Pith,' am referred to his 
 articles 8, 72, and 75. In article 8, neither the word 
 pith, nor any expression alluding to it, occurs. 
 
 In article 72, the stem of an outlaid tree is defined as 
 consisting of 'pith, fibre-vascular and* woody tissue, 
 medullary rays, bark, and epidermis.' 
 
 A more detailed statement follows, illustrated by a 
 figure surrounded by twenty-three letters namely, two 
 J s, three c s, four e s, three f&, one Z, four m s, three p s, 
 one r, and two vs. 
 
 Eighteen or twenty minute sputters of dots may, with 
 a good lens, be discerned to proceed from this alphabet, 
 and to stop- at various points, or lose themselves in the 
 texture, of the represented wood. And, knowing now 
 something of the matter beforehand, guessing a little 
 more, and gleaning the rest with my finest glass, I 
 achieve the elucidation of the figure, to the following 
 extent, explicable without letters at all, by my more sim- 
 ple drawing, Figure 25. 
 
 16. (1) The inner circle full of little cells, diminishing 
 in size towards the outside, represents the pith, ' very 
 large at this period of the growth' (the first year, we 
 
 * ' Or woody tissue,' suggests A. It is ' and ' in Balfour. 
 
VII. SCIENCE IN 
 
 
 
 CELLS. 
 
 135 
 
 are told in next page,) and * very large' he means in 
 proportion to the rest of the branch. How large he 
 does not say, in his text, but states, in his note, that the 
 figure is magnified 26 diameters. I have drawn mine by 
 the more convenient multiplier of 30, and given the real 
 
 FIG. 25. 
 
 size at B, according to Balfour : but without believing 
 him to be right. I never saw a maple stem of the first 
 year so small. 
 
 (2) The black band with white dots round the mar- 
 row, represents the marrow-sheath. 
 
 (3) From the marrow-sheath run the marrow-rays 
 
136 PROSERPIXA. 
 
 'dividing the vascular circle into numerous compact 
 segments.' A* ray 'cannot divide anything into a seg- 
 ment. Only a partition, or a knife, can do that. But 
 we shall find presently that marrow -rays ought to be 
 called marrow-plates, and are really mural, forming more 
 or less continuous partitions. 
 
 (4) The compact segments 'consist of woody vessels 
 and of porous vessels.' This is the first we have heard 
 of woody vessels/ He means the ''fibres ligneux' of 
 Figuier ; and represents them in each compartment, as 
 at C (Fig. 25), without telling us why he draws the 
 woody vessels as radiating. They appear to radiate, in- 
 deed, when wood is sawn across, but they are really up- 
 right. 
 
 (5) A moist layer of greenish cellular tissue called the 
 cambium layer black in Figure 25 and he draws it in 
 flat arches, without saying why. 
 
 (6) "] Three layers of bark (called in his note Endo- 
 
 (7) | phlceum, Mesophloeum, and Epiphloaum !) with 
 
 (8) j ' laticiferous vessels.' * 
 
 (9) Epidermis. The three layers of bark being sepa- 
 rated by single lines, I indicate the epidermis by a 
 double one, with a rough fringe outside, and thus we 
 have the parts of the section clearly visible and distinct 
 
 * Terms not used now, but others quite as bad : Cuticle, Epidermis, 
 Cortical layer, Periderm, Cambium, Phellodcrm six hard words for 
 'BARK/ says my careful annotator. "Yes ; and these new six to be 
 changed for six newer ones next year, no doubt." 
 
VII. SCIENCE IN HER CELLS. 137 
 
 for discussion, so far as this first figure goes, without 
 wanting one letter of all his three and twenty ! 
 
 17. But on the next page, this ingenious author gives 
 us a new figure, which professes to represent the same 
 order of things in a longitudinal section ; and in retrac- 
 ing that order sideways, instead of looking down, he not 
 only introduces new terras, but misses one of his old lay- 
 ers in doing so, thus : 
 
 His order, in explaining Figure 9G, contains, as above, 
 nine members of the tree stem. 
 
 But his order, in explaining Figure 97, contains only 
 eight, thus : 
 
 (1) The pith. , 
 
 Medullary sheath. \ 
 
 (3) Medullary ray = a Radius. 
 
 <4> Vascular zone, with woody fibres (not now ves- 
 sels !) The fibres are composed of spiral, annular, pitted, 
 and other vessels. 
 
 (5) Inner bark or 4 liber,' with layer of cambium 
 cells. 
 
 (6) Second layer of bark, or ' cellular envelope,' with 
 laticiferous vessels. 
 
 (7) Outer or tuberous layer of bark. 
 v Epidermis. 
 
 Doing the best I can to get at the muddle-headed gen- 
 tleman's meaning, it appears, by the lettering of his 
 Figure 97, my 25 above, that the f liber,' number 5, con- 
 tains the cambium layer in the middle of it. The part 
 
138 
 
 PROSERPINA. 
 
 of the liber between the cambium and the wood is not 
 
 marked in Figure 96 ; but the cambium is number 5, 
 
 and the liber outside of it is number 6, the Endophloeum 
 
 of his note. 
 
 Having got himself into this piece of lovely confusion, 
 
 he proceeds to give a figure of the wood in the second 
 year, which I think he has bor- 
 rowed, without acknowledgment, 
 from Figuier, omitting a piece 
 of Figuier's woodcut which is 
 unexplained in Figuier's text. I 
 will spare my readers the work 
 I have had to do, in order to get 
 the statements on either side 
 clarified : but I think they will 
 find, if they care to work through 
 the wilderness of the two au- 
 thors' wits, that this which fol- 
 lows is the sum of what they have 
 effectively to tell us ; with the 
 collated list of the main questions 
 
 they leave unanswered and, worse, unasked. 
 
 18. An ordinary tree branch, in transverse section, 
 
 consists essentially of three parts only, the Pith, Wood, 
 
 and Bark. 
 
 The pith is in full animation during the first year 
 
 that is to say, during the actual shooting of the wood. 
 
 We are left to infer that in the second year, the pith of 
 
 FIG. 26. 
 
VII. SCIENCE IN HER CELLS. 139 
 
 the then un progressive shoot becomes collective only, 
 not formative ; and that the pith of the new shoot vir- 
 tually energizes the new wood in its deposition beside 
 the old one. Thus, let a J, Figure 26, be a shoot of the 
 first year, and b c of the second. The pith remains of the 
 same thickness in both, but that of the new shoot is, I 
 suppose, chiefly active in sending down the new wood to 
 thicken the old one, which is collected, however, and 
 fastened by the extending pith-rays below. You see> I 
 have given each shoot four fibres of wood for its own ; 
 then the four fibres of the upper one send out two 
 to thicken the lower : the pith-rays, represented by 
 the white transverse claws, catch and gather all to- 
 gether. Mind, I certify nothing of this to you ; but if 
 this do not happen, let the botanists tell you what 
 does. 
 
 19. Secondly. The wood, represented by these four 
 lines, is to be always remembered as consisting of fibres 
 and vessels ; therefore it is called ; vascular,' a word 
 which you may as well remember (though . rarely needed 
 in familiar English), with its roots, vas, a vase, and vas- 
 culuin, a little vase or phial. ' Yascule ' may sometimes 
 be allowed in botanical descriptions where * cell ' is not 
 clear enough ; thus, at present, we find our botanists 
 calling the pith i cellular' but the wood ' vascular,' with, 
 I think, the implied meaning that a ' vascule,' little or 
 large, is a long thing, and has some liquid in it. while a 
 'cell' is a more or less round thing, and to be supposed 
 
140 
 
 PROSERPINA. 
 
 empty, unless described as full. But what liquid fills 
 the vascules of the wood, they do not tell 
 us.* I assume that they absorb water, as 
 long as the tree lives. 
 
 20. Wood, whether vascular or fibrous, is 
 however formed, in outlaid plants, first out- 
 side of the pith, and then, in shoots of the 
 second year, outside of the wood of the first, 
 and in the third year, outside of the wood of 
 the second ; so that supposing the quantity of 
 wood sent down from the growing shoot 
 distributed on a flat plane, the structure in 
 the third year would be as in Figure 27. 
 But since the new wood is distributed all 
 round the stem, (in successive cords or 
 threads, if not at once), the increase of sub- 
 stance after a year or two would be untraceable, unless more 
 shoots than one were formed at the extremity of the 
 branch. Of actual bud and branch structure, I gave intro- 
 ductory account long since in the fifth volume of * Modern 
 Painters.' f to which I would now refer the reader ; but 
 
 * " At first the vessels are pervious and full of fluid, but by degrees 
 thickening layers are deposited, which contract their canal." BAL- 
 FOUR. 
 
 f I cannot better this earlier statement, which in beginning ' Proser- 
 pina,' I intended to form a part of that work ; but, as readers already 
 in possession of it in the original form, ought not to be burdened with 
 its repetition, I shall repnblish those chapters as a supplement, which. 
 T trust may be soon issued. 
 
 FIG. 27. 
 
VII. SCIENCE IN HER CELLS. 141 
 
 both then, and to-day, after twenty years' further time 
 allowed nie, I sun unable to give the least explanation of 
 the mode in which the wood is really added to the in- 
 terior stem. I cannot find, even, whether this is mainly 
 done in springtime, or in the summer and autumn, when 
 the young suckers form on the wood ; but my impres- 
 sion is that though all the several substances are added 
 annually, a little more pith going to the edges of the pith- 
 plates, and a little more bark to the bark, with a great 
 deal more wood to the wood, there is a different or at 
 least successive period for each deposit, the carrying all 
 these elements to their places involving a fineness of basket 
 work or web work in the vessels, which neither microscope 
 nor dissecting tool can disentangle. The result on the 
 whole, however, is practically that we have, outside the 
 wood, always a mysterious 'cambium layer,' and then 
 some distinctions in the bark itself, of which we must 
 take separate notice. 
 
 21. Of Cambium, Dr. Gray's 220th article gives the 
 following account. " It is not a distinct substance, but 
 a layer of delicate new cells full of sap. The inner por- 
 tion of the cambium layer is, therefore, nascent wood, 
 and the outer nascent bark. As the cells of this layer 
 multiply, the greater number lengthen vertically into 
 prosenchyma, or woody tissue, while some are trans- 
 formed into ducts" (wood vessels i) " and others remain- 
 ing && pa/renchyma, continue the medullary rays, or com- 
 mence new ones." Xothing is said here of the part of 
 
142 PROSERPINA. 
 
 the cambium which becomes bark : but at page 128, the 
 thin walled cells of the bark are said to be those of ordi- 
 nary ' parenchyma,' and in the next page a very import- 
 ant passage occurs, which must have a paragraph to 
 itself. I close the present one with one more protest 
 against the entirely absurd terms ' par-enchyma,' for com- 
 mon cellular tissue, ' pros-enchyma,' for cellular tissue 
 with longer cells ; ' cambium ' for an early state of both, 
 and ' diachyma 'for a peculiar position of one \ * while the 
 chemistry of all these substances is wholly neglected, and 
 we have no idea given us of any difference in pith, wood, 
 and bark, than that they are made of short or long 
 young or old cells ! 
 
 22. But in Dr. Gray's 230th article comes this passage 
 of real value. (Italics mine all.) "While the newer 
 layers of the wood abound in crude sap, which they con- 
 vey to the leaves, those of the inner bark abound in 
 elaborated sap, which they receive from the leaves, and 
 convey to the cambium layer, or zone of growth. The 
 proper juices and peculiar products of plants are accord- 
 ingly found in the foliage and bark, especially the latter. 
 In the bark, therefore, either of the stem or root, medi- 
 cinal and other principles are usually to be sought, rather 
 
 * " ' Diachyma ' is parenchyma in the middle of a leaf !" (Balfour, 
 Art. 137.) Henceforward, if I ever make botanical quotations, I shall 
 always call parenchyma, By-tis ; prosenchyma, To-tis ; and diachyma, 
 Through-tis, short for By -tissue, To-tissue, and Through -tissue then 
 the student will see what all this modern wisdom comes to ! 
 
VII. SCIENCE IN HER CELLS. 143 
 
 than in the wood. Nevertheless, as the wood is kept in 
 connection with the bark by the medullary rays, many 
 products which probably originate in the former are de- 
 posited in the wood." 
 
 23. Now, at last, I see my way to useful summary of 
 the whole, which I had better give in a separate chapter : 
 and will try in future to do the preliminary work of 
 elaboration of the sap from my authorities, above shown, 
 in its process, to the reader, without making so much 
 fuss about it. But, I think in this case, it was desirable 
 that the floods of pros-, par-, peri-, dia-, and circumlocu- 
 tion, through which one has to wade towards any emer- 
 gent crag of fact in modern scientific books, should for 
 once be seen in the wasteful tide of them; that so I 
 might finally pray the younger students who feel, or re- 
 member, their disastrous sway, to cure themselves for 
 ever of the fatal habit of imagining that they know more 
 of anything after naming it unintelligibly, and thinking 
 about it impudently, than they did by loving sight of its 
 nameless being, and in wise confession of its boundless 
 mystery. 
 
 In re-reading the text of this number I find a few er- 
 rata, noted below, and can besides secure my young read- 
 ers of some things left doubtful, as, for instance, in their 
 acceptance of the word ' Monacha,' for the flower described 
 in the sixth chapter. I have used it now habitually too 
 long to part with it myself, and I think it will be found 
 
144 PROSERPINA. 
 
 serviceable and pleasurable by others. Neither shall I 
 now change the position of the Draconidee, as suggested 
 at p. 118, but keep all as first planned. See among other 
 reasons for doing so the letter quoted in p. 121. 
 
 I also add to the plate originally prepared for this num- 
 ber, one showing the effect of Veronica officinalis in deco- 
 ration of foreground, merely by its green leaves ; see the 
 paragraphs 1 and 5 of Chapter "VI. I have not repre- 
 sented the fine serration of the leaves, as they are quite 
 invisible from standing height : the book should be laid 
 on the floor and looked down on, without stooping, to 
 see the effect intended. And so I gladly close this long- 
 lagging number, hoping never to write such a tiresome 
 chapter as this again, or to make so long a jTause between 
 any readable one and its sequence. 
 
 p. 105, 1. 1, for ' love ' read ' be loved.' 
 p. 105, 1. 3, put a semicolon, instead of comma, after ' it.' 
 p. 113, 1. 9 from bottom, put 'calf's muzzle' in inverted commas, 
 p. 115, ' never appearing in clusters ' ; I meant, in close masses. It 
 forms exquisite little rosy crowds, on ground that it likes. 
 
XIII. 
 
 VERONICA OFFICINALIS. 
 Leafage in Foreground Effect. 
 

 LD 2l-5m-7,'33 
 
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 : RA L LIBRARY U.C. BERKELEY 
 
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