Volume I Part 8 (1/2)
”The earliest known mention of the thistle as the national badge of Scotland is in the inventory of the effects of James III., who probably adopted it as an appropriate ill.u.s.tration of the royal motto, _In defence_.
”Thistles occur on the coins of James IV., Mary, James V., and James VI.; and on those of James VI. they are for the first time accompanied by the motto, _Nemo me impune lacesset_.
”A collar of thistles appears on the gold bonnet-pieces of James V. of 1539; and the royal ensigns, as depicted in Sir David Lindsay's armorial register of 1542, are surrounded by a collar formed entirely of golden thistles, with an oval badge attached. {152}
”This collar, however, was a mere device until the inst.i.tution, or as it is generally but inaccurately called, the revival, of the order of the Thistle by James VII. (II. of England), which took place on May 29, 1687.”
Date of James III.'s reign 1460-1488.
{153}
CHAPTER IX.
OUTSIDE AND IN.
1. The elementary study of methods of growth, given in the following chapter, has been many years written, (the greater part soon after the fourth volume of 'Modern Painters'); and ought now to be rewritten entirely; but having no time to do this, I leave it with only a word or two of modification, because some truth and clearness of incipient notion will be conveyed by it to young readers, from which I can afterwards lop the errors, and into which I can graft the finer facts, better than if I had a less blunt embryo to begin with.
[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 16.]
[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 17.]
2. A stem, then, broadly speaking, (I had thus began the old chapter,) is the channel of communication between the leaf and root; and if the leaf can grow directly from the root there is no stem: so that it is well first to conceive of all plants as consisting of leaves and roots only, with the condition that each leaf must have its own quite particular root[42]
somewhere. {154} Let a b c, Fig. 16, be three leaves, each, as you see, with its own root, and by no means dependent on other leaves for its daily bread; and let the horizontal line be the surface of the ground. Then the plant has no stem, or an underground one. But if the three leaves rise above the ground, as in Fig. 17, they must reach their roots by elongating their stalks, and this elongation is the stem of the plant. If the outside leaves grow last, and are therefore youngest, the plant is said to grow from the outside. You know that 'ex' means out, and that 'gen' is the first syllable of Genesis (or creation), therefore the old botanists, putting an o between the two syllables, called plants whose outside leaves grew last, Ex-o-gens. If the inside leaf grows last, and is youngest, the plant was said to grow from the inside, and from the Greek Endon, within, called an 'Endo-gen.' If these names are persisted in, the Greek botanists, to return the compliment, will of course call Endogens [Greek: Inseidbornides], and Exogens [Greek: Houtseidbornides]. In the Oxford school, they will be called simply Inlaid and Outlaid.
[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 18.]
3. You see that if the outside leaves are to grow last, they may conveniently grow two at a time; which they accordingly do, and exogens always start with two little {155} leaves from their roots, and may therefore conveniently be called two-leaved; which, if you please, we will for our parts call them. The botanists call them 'two-suckered,' and can't be content to call them _that_ in English; but drag in a long Greek word, meaning the fleshy sucker of the sea-devil,--'cotyledon,' which, however, I find is practically getting shortened into 'cot,' and that they will have to end by calling endogens, monocots, and exogens, bicots. I mean steadily to call them one-leaved and two-leaved, for this further reason, that they differ not merely in the single or dual springing of first leaves from the seed; but in the distinctly single or dual arrangement of leaves afterwards on the stem; so that, through all the complexity obtained by alternate and spiral placing, every bicot or two-leaved flower or tree is in reality composed of dual groups of leaves, separated by a given length of stem; as, most characteristically in this pure mountain type of the Ragged Robin (Clarissa laciniosa), Fig. 18; and compare A, and B, Line-study II.; while, on the other hand, the monocot plants are by close a.n.a.lysis, I think, always resolvable into successively climbing leaves, sessile on one another, and sending their roots, {156} or processes, for nourishment, down through one another, as in Fig. 19.
[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 19.]
4. Not that I am yet clear, at all, myself; but I do think it's more the botanists' fault than mine, what 'cotyledonous' structure there may be at the outer base of each successive bud; and still less, how the intervenient length of stem, in the bicots, is related to their power, or law, of branching. For not only the two-leaved tree is outlaid, and the one-leaved inlaid, but the two-leaved tree is branched, and the one-leaved tree is not branched. This is a most vital and important distinction, which I state to you in very bold terms, for though there are some apparent exceptions to the law, there are, I believe, no real ones, if we define a branch rightly.
Thus, the head of a palm tree is merely a cl.u.s.ter of large leaves; and the spike of a gra.s.s, a cl.u.s.tered blossom. The stem, in both, is unbranched; and we should be able in this respect to cla.s.sify plants very simply indeed, but for a provoking species of intermediate creatures whose branching is always in the manner of corals, or sponges, or arborescent minerals, irregular and accidental, and essentially, therefore, distinguished from the systematic anatomy of a truly branched tree. Of these presently; we must go on by very short steps: and I find no step can be taken without check from existing generalizations. Sowerby's definition of Monocotyledons, in his ninth volume, begins thus: ”Herbs, (or rarely, and only in exotic genera,) trees, in which the wood, pith, and bark are indistinguishable.” {157} Now if there be one plant more than another in which the pith is defined, it is the common Rush; while the n.o.bler families of true herbs derive their princ.i.p.al character from being pithless altogether! We cannot advance too slowly.
5. In the families of one-leaved plants in which the young leaves grow directly out of the old ones, it becomes a grave question for them whether the old ones are to lie flat or edgeways, and whether they must therefore grow out of their faces or their edges. And we must at once understand the way they contrive it, in either case.
[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 20.]
Among the many forms taken by the Arethusan leaf, one of the commonest is long and gradually tapering,--much broader at the base than the point. We will take such an one for examination, and suppose that it is growing on the ground as in Fig. 20, with a root to its every fibre. Cut out a piece of strong paper roughly into the shape of this Arethusan leaf, a, Fig. 21.
Now suppose the next young leaf has to spring out of the front of this one, at about the middle of its height. Give it two nicks with the scissors at b b; then roll up the lower part into a cylinder, (it will overlap a good deal at the bottom,) and tie it fast with a fine thread: so, you will get the form at c. Then bend the top of it back, so that, seen sideways, it appears as at d, and you see you have made quite a little flower-pot to plant your {158} new leaf in, and perhaps it may occur to you that you have seen something like this before. Now make another, a little less wide, but with the part for the cylinder twice as long, roll it up in the same way, and slip it inside the other, with the flat part turned the other way, e.
Surely this reminds you now of something you have seen? Or must I draw the something (Fig. 22)?
[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 21.]
6. All gra.s.ses are thus constructed, and have their leaves set thus, opposite, on the sides of their tubular stems, alternately, as they ascend.
But in most of them there is also a peculiar construction, by which, at the base of the sheath, or enclosing tube, each leaf articulates itself with the rest of the stem at a ringed knot, or joint. {159}
[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 22.]