Volume I Part 9 (1/2)
THE BARK.
1. Philologists are continually collecting instances, like our friend the French critic of Virgil, of the beauty of finished language, or the origin of unfinished, in the imitation of natural sounds. But such collections give an entirely false idea of the real power of language, unless they are balanced by an opponent list of the words which signally fail of any such imitative virtue, and whose sound, if one dwelt upon it, is destructive of their meaning.
2. For instance. Few sounds are more distinct in their kind, or one would think more likely to be vocally reproduced in the word which signified them, than that of a swift rent in strongly woven cloth; and the English word 'rag' and ragged, with the Greek [Greek: rhegnumi], do indeed in a measure recall the tormenting effect upon the ear. But it is curious that the verb which is meant to express the actual origination of rags, should rhyme with two words entirely musical and peaceful--words, indeed, which I always reserve for final resource in pa.s.sages which I want to be soothing as well as pretty,--'fair,' and {171} 'air;' while, in its orthography, it is identical with the word representing the bodily sign of tenderest pa.s.sion, and grouped with a mult.i.tude of others,[44] in which the mere insertion of a consonant makes such wide difference of sentiment as between 'dear' and 'drear,' or 'pear' and 'spear.' The Greek root, on the other hand, has persisted in retaining some vestige of its excellent dissonance, even where it has parted with the last vestige of the idea it was meant to convey; and when Burns did his best,--and his best was above most men's--to gather pleasant liquid and l.a.b.i.al syllabling, round gentle meaning, in
”Bonnie la.s.sie, will ye go, Will ye go, will ye go, Bonnie la.s.sie, will ye go, To the birks of Aberfeldy?”
he certainly had little thought that the delicately crisp final k, in birk, was the remnant of a magnificent Greek effort to express the rending of the earth by earthquake, in the wars of the giants. In the middle of that word 'esmarag[=e]se,' we get our own beggar's 'rag' for a pure root, which afterwards, through the Latin frango, softens into our 'break,' and 'bark,'--the 'broken thing'; that idea of its rending around the tree's stem having been, in the very earliest human efforts at botanical description, {172} attached to it by the pure Aryan race, watching the strips of rosy satin break from the birch stems, in the Aberfeldys of Imaus.
3. That this tree should have been the only one which ”the Aryans, coming as conquerors from the North, were able to recognize in Hindustan,”[45] and should therefore also be ”the only one whose name is common to Sanskrit, and to the languages of Europe,” delighted me greatly, for two reasons: the first, for its proof that in spite of the development of species, the sweet gleaming of birch stem has never changed its argent and sable for any unchequered heraldry; and the second, that it gave proof of a much more important fact, the keenly accurate observation of Aryan foresters at that early date; for the fact is that the breaking of the thin-beaten silver of the birch trunk is so delicate, and its smoothness so graceful, that until I painted it with care, I was not altogether clear-headed myself about the way in which the chequering was done: nor until Fors today brought me to the house of one of my father's friends at Carshalton, and gave me three birch stems to look at just outside the window, did I perceive it to be a primal question about them, what it is that blanches that dainty dress of theirs, or, antic.i.p.atorily, weaves. What difference is there between the making of the corky excrescence of other {173} trees, and of this almost transparent fine white linen? I perceive that the older it is, within limits, the finer and whiter; h.o.a.ry tissue, instead of h.o.a.ry hair--honouring the tree's aged body; the outer sprays have no silvery light on their youth. Does the membrane thin itself into whiteness merely by stretching, or produce an outer film of new substance?[46]
4. And secondly, this invest.i.ture, why is it transverse to the trunk,--swathing it, as it were, in bands? Above all,--when it breaks,--why does it break round the tree instead of down? All other bark breaks as anything would, naturally, round a swelling rod, but this, as if the stem were growing longer; until, indeed, it reaches farthest heroic old age, when the whiteness pa.s.ses away again, and the rending is like that of other trees, downwards. So that, as it were in a changing language, we have the great botanical fact twice taught us, by this tree of Eden, that the skins of trees differ from the skins of the higher animals in that, for the most part, they won't stretch, and must be worn torn.
So that in fact the most popular arrangement of vegetative adult costume is Irish; a normal invest.i.ture in honourable rags; and decorousness of tattering, as of a banner borne in splendid ruin through storms of war.
5. Now therefore, if we think of it, we have five {174} distinct orders of invest.i.ture for organic creatures; first, mere secretion of mineral substance, chiefly lime, into a hard sh.e.l.l, which, if broken, can only be mended, like china--by sticking it together; secondly, organic substance of armour which grows into its proper shape at once for good and all, and can't be mended at all, if broken, (as of insects); thirdly, organic substance of skin, which stretches, as the creatures grows, by cracking, over a fresh skin which is supplied beneath it, as in bark of trees; fourthly, organic substance of skin cracked symmetrically into plates or scales which can increase all round their edges, and are connected by softer skin, below, as in fish and reptiles, (divided with exquisite l.u.s.tre and flexibility, in feathers of birds); and lastly, true elastic skin, extended in soft unison with the creature's growth,--blus.h.i.+ng with its blood, fading with its fear; breathing with its breath, and guarding its life with sentinel beneficence of pain.
6. It is notable, in this higher and lower range of organic beauty, that the decoration, by pattern and colour, which is almost universal in the protective coverings of the middle ranks of animals, should be reserved in vegetables for the most living part of them, the flower only; and that among animals, few but the malignant and senseless are permitted, in the corrugation of their armour, to resemble the half-dead trunk of the tree, as they float beside it in the tropical river. I must, however, leave the scale patterns of the palms and other inlaid tropical {175} stems for after-examination,--content, at present, with the general idea of the bark of an outlaid tree as the successive acc.u.mulation of the annual protecting film, rent into ravines of slowly increasing depth, and coloured, like the rock, whose stability it begins to emulate, with the grey or gold of clinging lichen and embroidering moss.
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CHAPTER XI.
GENEALOGY.
1. Returning, after more than a year's sorrowful interval, to my Sicilian fields,--not incognisant, now, of some of the darker realms of Proserpina; and with feebler heart, and, it may be, feebler wits, for wandering in her brighter ones,--I find what I had written by way of sequel to the last chapter, somewhat difficult, and extremely tiresome. Not the less, after giving fair notice of the difficulty, and asking due pardon for the tiresomeness, I am minded to let it stand; trusting to end, with it, once for all, investigations of the kind. But in finis.h.i.+ng this first volume of my School Botany, I must try to give the reader some notion of the plan of the book, as it now, during the time for thinking over it which illness left me, has got itself arranged in my mind, within limits of possible execution. And this the rather, because I wish also to state, somewhat more gravely than I have yet done, the grounds on which I venture here to reject many of the received names of plants; and to subst.i.tute others for them, relating to entirely different attributes {177} from those on which their present nomenclature is confusedly edified.
I have already in some measure given the reasons for this change;[47] but I feel that, for the sake of those among my scholars who have laboriously learned the accepted names, I ought now also to explain its method more completely.
2. I call the present system of nomenclature _confusedly_ edified, because it introduces,--without, apparently, any consciousness of the inconsistency, and certainly with no apology for it,--names founded sometimes on the history of plants, sometimes on their qualities, sometimes on their forms, sometimes on their products, and sometimes on their poetical a.s.sociations.
On their history--as 'Gentian' from King Gentius, and Funkia from Dr. Funk.
On their qualities--as 'Scrophularia' from its (quite uncertified) use in scrofula.
On their forms--as the 'Caryophylls' from having petals like husks of nuts.
On their products--as 'Cocos nucifera' from its nuts.
And on their poetical a.s.sociations,--as the Star of Bethlehem from its imagined resemblance to the light of that seen by the Magi.
3. Now, this variety of grounds for nomenclature might patiently, and even with advantage, be permitted, {178} provided the grounds themselves were separately firm, and the inconsistency of method advisedly allowed, and, in each case, justified. If the histories of King Gentius and Dr. Funk are indeed important branches of human knowledge;--if the Scrophulariaceae do indeed cure King's Evil;--if pinks be best described in their likeness to nuts;--and the Star of Bethlehem verily remind us of Christ's Nativity,--by all means let these and other such names be evermore retained. But if Dr.
Funk be not a person in any special manner needing either stellification or florification; if neither herb nor flower can avail, more than the touch of monarchs, against hereditary pain; if it be no better account of a pink to say it is nut-leaved, than of a nut to say it is pink-leaved; and if the modern mind, incurious respecting the journeys of wise men, has already confused, in its Bradshaw's Bible, the station of Bethlehem with that of Bethel,[48] it is certainly time to take some order with the partly false, partly useless, and partly forgotten literature of the Fields; and, before we bow our children's memories to the burden of it, ensure that there shall be matter worth carriage in the load.
4. And farther, in attempting such a change, we must be clear in our own minds whether we wish our nomenclature to tell us something about the plant itself, or only to tell us the place it holds in relation to other plants: as, for instance, in the Herb-Robert, would it be well to {179} christen it, shortly, 'Rob Roy,' because it is pre-eminently red, and so have done with it;--or rather to dwell on its family connections, and call it 'Macgregoraceous'?
5. Before we can wisely decide this point, we must resolve whether our botany is intended mainly to be useful to the vulgar, or satisfactory to the scientific elite. For if we give names characterizing individuals, the circle of plants which any country possesses may be easily made known to the children who live in it: but if we give names founded on the connexion between these and others at the Antipodes, the parish school-master will certainly have double work; and it may be doubted greatly whether the parish school-boy, at the end of the lecture, will have half as many ideas.