Proserpina Volume I Part 16

[14] "Duhamel, botanist of the last century, tells us that, wishing to preserve a field of good land from the roots of an avenue of elms which were exhausting it, he cut a ditch between the field and avenue to intercept the roots. But he saw with surprise those of the roots which had not been cut, go down behind the slope of the ditch to keep out of the light, go under the ditch, and into the field again." And the Swiss naturalist Bonnet said wittily, apropos of a wonder of this sort, "that sometimes it was difficult to distinguish a cat from a rosebush."

[15] As the first great office of the mosses is the gathering of earth, so that of the gra.s.ses is the binding of it. Theirs the Enchanter's toil, not in vain,--making ropes out of sea-sand.

[16] Drosidae, in our school nomenclature, is the general name, including the four great tribes, iris, asphodel, amaryllis, and lily. See reason for this name given in the 'Queen of the Air,' Section II.

[17] The only use of a great part of our existing nomenclature is to enable one botanist to describe to another a plant which the other has not seen.

When the science becomes approximately perfect, all known plants will be properly figured, so that n.o.body need describe them; and unknown plants be so rare that n.o.body will care to learn a new and difficult language, in order to be able to give an account of what in all probability he will never see.

[18] An excellent book, nevertheless.

[19] Lindley, 'Introduction to Botany,' vol. i., p. 21. The terms "wholly obsolete," says an authoritative botanic friend. Thank Heaven!

[20] "You should see the girders on under-side of the Victoria Water-lily, the most wonderful bit of engineering, of the kind, I know of."--('Botanical friend.')

[21] Roughly, Cyllene 7,700 feet high; Erymanthus 7,000; Maenalus 6,000.

[22] _March 3rd._--We now ascend the roots of the mountain called Kastania, and begin to pa.s.s between it and the mountain of Alonistena, which is on our right. The latter is much higher than Kastania, and, like the other peaked summits of the Maenalian range, is covered with firs, and deeply at present with snow. The snow lies also in our pa.s.s. At a fountain in the road, the small village of Bazeniko is half a mile on the right, standing at the foot of the Maenalian range, and now covered with snow.

Saeta is the most lofty of the range of mountains, which are in face of Levidhi, to the northward and eastward; they are all a part of the chain which extends from Mount Khelmos, and connects that great summit with Artemisium, Parthenium, and Parnon. Mount Saeta is covered with firs. The mountain between the plain of Levidhi and Alonistena, or, to speak by the ancient nomenclature, that part of the Maenalian range which separates the Orchomenia from the valleys of Helisson and Methydrium, is clothed also with large forests of the same trees; the road across this ridge from Lavidhi to Alonistena is now impracticable on account of the snow.

I am detained all day at Levidhi by a heavy fall of snow, which before the evening has covered the ground to half a foot in depth, although the village is not much elevated above the plain, nor in a more lofty situation than Tripolitza.

_March 4th._--Yesterday afternoon and during the night the snow fell in such quant.i.ties as to cover all the plains and adjacent mountains; and the country exhibited this morning as fine a snow-scene as Norway could supply.

As the day advanced and the sun appeared, the snow melted rapidly, but the sky was soon overcast again, and the snow began to fall.

[23] Just in time, finding a heap of gold under an oak tree some thousand years old, near Arundel, I've made them out: Eight, divided by three; that is to say, three couples of petals, with two odd little ones inserted for form's sake. No wonder I couldn't decipher them by memory.

[24] Figs. 8 and 9 are both drawn and engraved by Mr. Burgess.

[25] Of Vespertilian science generally, compare 'Eagles' Nest,' pp. 25 and 179.

[26] The mathematical term is 'rhomb.'

[27] [Greek: hes to sperma artopoieitai.]

[28] [Greek: epimekes echousa to kephalion.] Dioscorides makes no effort to distinguish species, but gives the different names as if merely used in different places.

[29] It is also used sometimes of the garden poppy, says Dioscorides, "[Greek: dia to rhein ex autes ton opon]"--"because the sap, opium, flows from it."

[30] See all the pa.s.sages quoted by Liddell.

[31] I find this chapter rather tiresome on re-reading it myself, and cancel some farther criticism of the imitation of this pa.s.sage by Virgil, one of the few pieces of the aeneid which are purely and vulgarly imitative, rendered also false as well as weak by the introducing sentence, "Volvitur Euryalus leto," after which the simile of the drooping flower is absurd. Of criticism, the chief use of which is to warn all sensible men from such business, the following abstract of Diderot's notes on the pa.s.sage, given in the 'Sat.u.r.day Review' for April 29th, 1871, is worth preserving. (Was the French critic really not aware that Homer _had_ written the lines his own way?)

"Diderot ill.u.s.trates his theory of poetical hieroglyphs by no quotations, but we can show the manner of his minute and sometimes fanciful criticism by repeating his a.n.a.lysis of the pa.s.sage of Virgil wherein the death of Euryalus is described:--

'Pulchrosque per artus It cruor, inque humeros cervix collapsa rec.u.mbit; Purpureus veluti c.u.m flos succisus aratro Languescit moriens; la.s.sove papavera collo Demisere caput, pluvia c.u.m forte gravantur.'

"The sound of 'It cruor,' according to Diderot, suggests the image of a jet of blood; 'cervix collapsa rec.u.mbit,' the fall of a dying man's head upon his shoulder; 'succisus' imitates the use of a cutting scythe (not plough); 'demisere' is as soft as the eye of a flower; 'gravantur,' on the other hand, has all the weight of a calyx, filled with rain; 'collapsa' marks an effort and a fall, and similar double duty is performed by 'papavera,' the first two syllables symbolizing the poppy upright, the last two the poppy bent. While thus pursuing his minute investigations, Diderot can scarcely help laughing at himself, and candidly owns that he is open to the suspicion of discovering in the poem beauties which have no existence. He therefore qualifies his eulogy by pointing out two faults in the pa.s.sage.

'Gravantur,' notwithstanding the praise it has received, is a little too heavy for the light head of a poppy, even when filled with water. As for 'aratro,' coming as it does after the hiss of 'succisus,' it is altogether abominable. Had Homer written the lines, he would have ended with some hieroglyph, which would have continued the hiss or described the fall of a flower. To the hiss of 'succisus' Diderot is warmly attached. Not by mistake, but in order to justify the sound, he ventures to translate 'aratrum' into 'scythe,' boldly and rightly declaring in a marginal note that this is not the meaning of the word."

[32] And I have too harshly called our English vines, 'wicked weeds of Kent,' in Fors Clavigera, xxvii. 11. Much may be said for Ale, when we brew it for our people honestly.

[33] Has my reader ever thought,--I never did till this moment,--how it perfects the exquisite character which Scott himself loved, as he invented, till he changed the form of the novel, that his habitual interjection should be this word;--not but that the oath, by conscience, was happily still remaining then in Scotland, taking the place of the mediaeval 'by St.

Andrew,' we in England, long before the Scot, having lost all sense of the Puritanical appeal to private conscience, as of the Catholic oath, 'by St.

George;' and our uncanonized 'by George' in sonorous rudeness, ratifying, not now our common conscience, but our individual opinion.

[34] 'Jotham,' 'Sum perfectio eorum,' or 'Consummatio eorum.'

(Interpretation of name in Vulgate index.)

[35] If you will look at the engraving, in the England and Wales series, of Turner's Oakhampton, you will see its use.

[36] General a.s.sertions of this kind must always be accepted under indulgence,--exceptions being made afterwards.

[37] I use 'round' rather than 'cylindrical,' for simplicity's sake.

[38] Carduus Arvensis. 'Creeping Thistle,' in Sowerby; why, I cannot conceive, for there is no more creeping in it than in a furzebush. But it especially haunts foul and neglected ground; so I keep the Latin name, translating 'Waste-Thistle.' I could not show the variety of the curves of the involucre without enlarging; and if, on this much increased scale, I had tried to draw the flower, it would have taken Mr. Allen and me a good month's more work. And I had no more a month than a life, to spare: so the action only of the spreading flower is indicated, but the involucre drawn with precision.

[39] The florets gathered in the daisy are cinquefoils, examined closely.

No system founded on colour can be very general or unexceptionable: but the splendid purples of the pansy, and thistle, which will be made one of the lower composite groups under Margarita, may justify the general a.s.sertion of this order's being purple.

[40] See Miss Yonge's exhaustive account of the name, 'History of Christian Names,' vol. i., p. 265.

[41] (Du Cange.) The word 'Margarete' is given as heraldic English for pearl, by Lady Juliana Berners, in the book of St. Albans.

[42] Recent botanical research makes this statement more than dubitable.

Nevertheless, on no other supposition can the forms and action of tree-branches, so far as at present known to me, be yet clearly accounted for.

[43] Not always in muscular power; but the framework on which strong muscles are to act, as that of an insect's wing, or its jaw, is never insectile.

[44] It is one of the three cadences, (the others being of the words rhyming to 'mind' and 'way,') used by Sir Philip Sidney in his marvellous paraphrase of the 55th Psalm.

[45] Lectures on the Families of Speech, by the Rev. F. Farrer Longman, 1870. Page 81.

[46] I only profess, you will please to observe, to ask questions in Proserpina. Never to answer any. But of course this chapter is to introduce some further inquiry in another place.

[47] See Introduction, pp. 5-8.

[48] See Sowerby's nomenclature of the flower, vol. ix., plate 1703.

[49] Linnaeus used this term for the oleanders; but evidently with less accuracy than usual.

[50] "[Greek: anthe porphuroeide]" says Dioscorides, of the race generally,--but "[Greek: anthe de hupoporphura]" of this particular one.

[51] I offer a sample of two dozen for good papas and mammas to begin with:--

Angraec.u.m.

Anisopetalum.

Bra.s.savola.