Volume I Part 1 (1/2)

Proserpina.

Volume 1.

by John Ruskin.

INTRODUCTION.

BRANTWOOD, _14th March, 1874._

Yesterday evening I was looking over the first book in which I studied Botany,--Curtis's Magazine, published in 1795 at No. 3, St. George's Crescent, Blackfriars Road, and sold by the princ.i.p.al booksellers in Great Britain and Ireland. Its plates are excellent, so that I am always glad to find in it the picture of a flower I know. And I came yesterday upon what I suppose to be a variety of a favourite flower of mine, called, in Curtis, ”the St. Bruno's Lily.”

I am obliged to say ”what I suppose to be a variety,” because my pet lily is branched,[1] while this is drawn as unbranched, and especially stated to be so. And the page of text, in which this statement is made, is so characteristic of botanical books, and botanical science, not to say all science as. .h.i.therto taught for the blessing of mankind; {2} and of the difficulties thereby accompanying its communication, that I extract the page entire, printing it, opposite, as nearly as possible in facsimile.

Now you observe, in this instructive page, that you have in the first place, nine names given you for one flower; and that among these nine names, you are not even at liberty to make your choice, because the united authority of Haller and Miller may be considered as an accurate balance to the single authority of Linnaeus; and you ought therefore for the present to remain, yourself, balanced between the sides. You may be farther embarra.s.sed by finding that the Antheric.u.m of Savoy is only described as growing in Switzerland. And farther still, by finding that Mr. Miller describes two varieties of it, which differ only in size, while you are left to conjecture whether the one here figured is the larger or smaller; and how great the difference is.

Farther, If you wish to know anything of the habits of the plant, as well as its nine names, you are informed that it grows both at the bottoms of the mountains, and the tops; and that, with us, it flowers in May and June,--but you are not told when, in its native country.

The four lines of the last clause but one, may indeed be useful to gardeners; but--although I know my good father and mother did the best they could for me in buying this beautiful book; and though the admirable plates of it did their work, and taught me much, I cannot wonder that neither my infantine nor boyish mind was irresistibly attracted by the text of which this page is one of the most favourable specimens; nor, in consequence, that my botanical studies were--when I had attained the age of fifty--no farther advanced than the reader will find them in the opening chapter of this book.

CHAPTER I.

MOSS.

DENMARK HILL, _3rd November, 1868._

1. It is mortifying enough to write,--but I think thus much ought to be written,--concerning myself, as 'the author of Modern Painters.' In three months I shall be fifty years old: and I don't at this hour--ten o'clock in the morning of the two hundred and sixty-eighth day of my forty-ninth year--know what 'moss' is.

There is nothing I have more _intended_ to know--some day or other. But the moss 'would always be there'; and then it was so beautiful, and so difficult to examine, that one could only do it in some quite separated time of happy leisure--which came not. I never was like to have less leisure than now, but I _will_ know what moss is, if possible, forthwith.

2. To that end I read preparatorily, yesterday, what account I could find of it in all the botanical books in the house. Out of them all, I get this general notion of a moss,--that it has a fine fibrous root,--a stem surrounded with spirally set leaves,--and produces its fruit in a small case, under a cap. I fasten especially, however, on a {13} sentence of Louis Figuier's, about the particular species, Hypnum:--

”These mosses, which often form little islets of verdure at the feet of poplars and willows, are robust vegetable organisms, which do not decay.”[5]

3. ”Qui ne pourrissent point.” What do they do with themselves, then?--it immediately occurs to me to ask. And, secondly,--If this immortality belongs to the Hypnum only?

It certainly does not, by any means: but, however modified or limited, this immortality is the first thing we ought to take note of in the mosses. They are, in some degree, what the ”everlasting” is in flowers. Those minute green leaves of theirs do not decay, nor fall.

But how do they die, or how stop growing, then?--it is the first thing I want to know about them. And from all the books in the house, I can't as yet find out this. Meanwhile I will look at the leaves themselves.

4. Going out to the garden, I bring in a bit of old brick, emerald green on its rugged surface,[6] and a thick piece of mossy turf.

First, for the old brick: To think of the quant.i.ty of pleasure one has had in one's life from that emerald green velvet,--and yet that for the first time to-day I am verily going to look at it! Doing so, through a pocket {14} lens of no great power, I find the velvet to be composed of small star-like groups of smooth, strong, oval leaves,--intensely green, and much like the young leaves of any other plant, except in this;--they all have a long brown spike, like a sting, at their ends.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 1.]

5. Fastening on that, I take the Flora Danica,[7] and look through its plates of mosses, for their leaves only; and I find, first, that this spike, or strong central rib, is characteristic;--secondly, that the said leaves are apt to be not only spiked, but serrated, and otherwise angry-looking at the points;--thirdly, that they have a tendency to fold together in the centre (Fig. 1[8]); and at last, after an hour's work at them, it strikes me suddenly that they are more like pineapple leaves than anything else.

And it occurs to me, very unpleasantly, at the same time, that I don't know what a pineapple is!

Stopping to ascertain that, I am told that a pineapple belongs to the 'Bromeliaceae'--(can't stop to find out what that means)--nay, that of these plants ”the pineapple is the representative” (Loudon); ”their habit is acid, their leaves rigid, and toothed with spines, their {15} bracteas often coloured with scarlet, and their flowers either white or blue”--(what are their flowers like?) But the two sentences that most interest me, are, that in the damp forests of Carolina, the Tillandsia, which is an 'epiphyte' (_i.e._, a plant growing on other plants,) ”forms dense festoons among the branches of the trees, vegetating among the black mould that collects upon the bark of trees in hot damp countries; other species are inhabitants of deep and gloomy forests, and others form, with their spring leaves, an impenetrable herbage in the Pampas of Brazil.” So they really seem to be a kind of moss, on a vast scale.

6. Next, I find in Gray,[9] Bromeliaceae, and--the very thing I want--”Tillandsia, the black _moss_, or long moss, which, _like most Bromelias_, grows on the branches of trees.” So the pineapple is really a moss; only it is a moss that flowers but 'imperfectly.' ”The fine fruit is caused by the consolidation of the imperfect flowers.” (I wish we could consolidate some imperfect English moss-flowers into little pineapples then,--though they were only as big as filberts.) But we cannot follow that farther now; nor consider when a flower is perfect, and when it is not, or we should get into morals, and I don't know where else; we will go back to the moss I have gathered, for I begin to see my way, a little, to understanding it.