Volume I Part 11 (1/2)

XI. HESPERIDES.--Already a name given to the order. {198} Aegle, prettier and more cla.s.sic than Limonia, includes the idea of brightness in the blossom.

XII. ATHENAIDES.--I take Fraxinus into this group, because the mountain ash, in its hawthorn-scented flower, scarletest of berries, and exquisitely formed and finished leaf.a.ge, belongs wholly to the floral decoration of our native rocks, and is a.s.sociated with their human interests, though lightly, not less spiritually, than the olive with the mind of Greece.

28. The remaining groups are in great part natural; but I separate for subsequent study five orders of supreme domestic utility, the Mallows, Currants, Pease,[58] Cresses, and Cranesbills, from those which, either in fruit or blossom, are for finer pleasure or higher beauty. I think it will be generally interesting for children to learn those five names as an easy lesson, and gradually discover, wondering, the world that they include. I will give their terminology at length, separately.

29. One cannot, in all groups, have all the divisions of equal importance; the Mallows are only placed with the other four for their great value in decoration of cottage gardens in autumn: and their softly healing {199} qualities as a tribe. They will mentally connect the whole useful group with the three great aesculapiadae, Cinchona, Coffea, and Camellia.

30. Taking next the water-plants, crowned in the DROSIDae, which include the five great families, Juncus, Jacinthus, Amaryllis, Iris, and Lilium, and are masculine in their Greek name because their two first groups, Juncus and Jacinthus, are masculine, I gather together the three orders of TRITONIDES, which are notably trefoil; the NAIADES, notably quatrefoil, but for which I keep their present pretty name; and the BATRACHIDES,[59]

notably cinqfoil, for which I keep their present ugly one, only changing it from Latin into Greek.

31. I am not sure of being forgiven so readily for putting the Gra.s.ses, Sedges, Mosses, and Lichens together, under the great general head of Demetridae. But it seems to me the mosses and lichens belong no less definitely to Demeter, in being the first gatherers of earth on rock, and the first coverers of its sterile surface, than the gra.s.s which at last prepares it to the foot and to the food of man. And with the mosses I shall take all the especially moss-plants which otherwise are homeless or companionless, Drosera, and the like, and as a connecting link with the flowers belonging to the Dark {200} Kora, the two strange orders of the Ophryds and Agarics.

32. Lastly will come the orders of flowers which may be thought of as belonging for the most part to the Dark Kora of the lower world,--having at least the power of death, if not its terror, given them, together with offices of comfort and healing in sleep, or of strengthening, if not too prolonged, action on the nervous power of life. Of these, the first will be the DIONYSIDae,--Hedera, Vitis, Liana; then the DRACONIDae,--Atropa, Digitalis, Linaria; and, lastly, the MOIRIDae,--Conium, Papaver, Solanum, Arum, and Nerium.

33. As I see this scheme now drawn out, simple as it is, the scope of it seems not only far too great for adequate completion by my own labour, but larger than the time likely to be given to botany by average scholars would enable them intelligently to grasp: and yet it includes, I suppose, not the tenth part of the varieties of plants respecting which, in compet.i.tive examination, a student of physical science is now expected to know, or at least a.s.sert on hearsay, _something_.

So far as I have influence with the young, myself, I would pray them to be a.s.sured that it is better to know the habits of one plant than the names of a thousand; and wiser to be happily familiar with those that grow in the nearest field, than arduously cognisant of all that plume the isles of the Pacific, or illumine the Mountains of the Moon. {201}

Nevertheless, I believe that when once the general form of this system in Proserpina has been well learned, much other knowledge may be easily attached to it, or sheltered under the eaves of it: and in its own development, I believe everything may be included that the student will find useful, or may wisely desire to investigate, of properly European botany. But I am convinced that the best results of his study will be reached by a resolved adherence to extreme simplicity of primal idea, and primal nomenclature.

34. I do not think the need of revisal of our present scientific cla.s.sification could be more clearly demonstrated than by the fact that laurels and roses are confused, even by Dr. Lindley, in the mind of his feminine readers; the English word laurel, in the index to his first volume of Ladies' Botany, referring them to the cherries, under which the common laurel is placed as 'Prunus Laurocerasus,' while the true laurel, 'Laurus n.o.bilis,' must be found in the index of the second volume, under the Latin form 'Laurus.'

This accident, however, ill.u.s.trates another, and a most important point to be remembered, in all arrangements whether of plants, minerals, or animals.

No single cla.s.sification can possibly be perfect, or anything _like_ perfect. It must be, at its best, a ground, or _warp_ of arrangement only, through which, or over which, the cross threads of another,--yes, and of many others,--must be woven in our minds. Thus the almond, though in {202} the form and colour of its flower, and method of its fruit, rightly a.s.sociated with the roses, yet by the richness and sweetness of its kernel must be held mentally connected with all plants that bear nuts. These a.s.suredly must have something in their structure common, justifying their being gathered into a conceived or conceivable group of 'Nuciferae,' in which the almond, hazel, walnut, cocoa-nut, and such others would be considered as having relations.h.i.+p, at least in their power of secreting a crisp and sweet substance which is not wood, nor bark, nor pulp, nor seed-pabulum reducible to softness by boiling;--but quite separate substance, for which I do not know that there at present exists any botanical name,--of which, hitherto, I find no general account, and can only myself give so much, on reflection, as that it is crisp and close in texture, and always contains some kind of oil or milk.

35. Again, suppose the arrangement of plants could, with respect to their flowers and fruits, be made approximately complete, they must instantly be broken and reformed by comparison of their stems and leaves. The three _creeping_ families of the Charites,--Rosa, Rubra, and Fragaria,--must then be frankly separated from the elastic Persica and knotty Pomum; of which one wild and lovely species, the hawthorn, is no less notable for the ma.s.sive acc.u.mulation of wood in the stubborn stem of it, than the wild rose for her lovely power of wreathing her garlands at pleasure wherever they are {203} fairest, the stem following them and sustaining, where they will.

36. Thus, as we examine successively each part of any plant, new sisterhoods, and unthought-of fellows.h.i.+ps, will be found between the most distant orders; and ravines of unexpected separation open between those otherwise closely allied. Few botanical characters are more definite than the leaf structure ill.u.s.trated in Plate VI., which has given to one group of the Drosidae the descriptive name of Ensatae, (see above, Chapter IX., -- 11,) but this conformation would not be wisely permitted to interfere in the least with the arrangement founded on the much more decisive floral aspects of the Iris and Lily. So, in the fifth volume of 'Modern Painters,'

the sword-like, or rather rapier-like, leaves of the pine are opposed, for the sake of more vivid realization, to the s.h.i.+eld-like leaves of the greater number of inland trees; but it would be absurd to allow this difference any share in botanical arrangement,--else we should find ourselves thrown into sudden discomfiture by the wide-waving and opening foliage of the palms and ferns.

37. But through all the defeats by which insolent endeavors to sum the orders of Creation must be reproved, and in the midst of the successes by which patient insight will be surprised, the fact of the _confirmation_ of species in plants and animals must remain always a miraculous one. What outstretched sign of constant Omnipotence can be more awful, than that the susceptibility to {204} external influences, with the reciprocal power of transformation, in the organs of the plant; and the infinite powers of moral training and mental conception over the nativity of animals, should be so restrained within impa.s.sable limits, and by inconceivable laws, that from generation to generation, under all the clouds and revolutions of heaven with its stars, and among all the calamities and convulsions of the Earth with her pa.s.sions, the numbers and the names of her Kindred may still be counted for her in unfailing truth;--still the fifth sweet leaf unfold for the Rose, and the sixth spring for the Lily; and yet the wolf rave tameless round the folds of the pastoral mountains, and yet the tiger flame through the forests of the night.

{205}

CHAPTER XII.

CORA AND KRONOS.

1. Of all the lovely wild plants--and few, mountain-bred, in Britain, are other than lovely,--that fill the clefts and crest the ridges of my Brantwood rock, the dearest to me, by far, are the cl.u.s.ters of whortleberry which divide possession of the lower slopes with the wood hyacinth and pervenche. They are personally and specially dear to me for their a.s.sociation in my mind with the woods of Montanvert; but the plant itself, irrespective of all accidental feeling, is indeed so beautiful in all its ways--so delicately strong in the spring of its leaf.a.ge, so modestly wonderful in the formation of its fruit, and so pure in choice of its haunts, not capriciously or unfamiliarly, but growing in luxuriance through all the healthiest and sweetest seclusion of mountain territory throughout Europe,--that I think I may without any sharp remonstrance be permitted to express for this once only, personal feeling in my nomenclature, calling it in Latin 'Myrtilla Cara,' and in French 'Myrtille Cherie,' but retaining for it in English its simply cla.s.sic name, 'Blue Whortle.' {206}

2. It is the most common representative of the group of Myrtillae, which, on reference to our cla.s.sification, will be found central between the Ericae and Aurorae. The distinctions between these three families may be easily remembered, and had better be learned before going farther; but first let us note their fellows.h.i.+p. They are all Oreiades, mountain plants; in specialty, they are all strong in stem, low in stature, and the Ericae and Aurorae glorious in the flush of their infinitely exulting flowers, (”the rapture of the heath”--above spoken of, p. 96.) But all the essential loveliness of the Myrtillae is in their leaves and fruit: the first always exquisitely finished and grouped like the most precious decorative work of sacred painting; the second, red or purple, like beads of coral or amethyst. Their minute flowers have rarely any general part or power in the colors of mountain ground; but, examined closely, they are one of the chief joys of the traveller's rest among the Alps; and full of exquisiteness unspeakable, in their several bearings and miens of blossom, so to speak.

Plate VIII. represents, however feebly, the proud bending back of her head by Myrtilla Regina:[60] an action as beautiful in _her_ as it is terrible in the Kingly Serpent of Egypt.

3. The formal differences between these three families are trenchant and easily remembered. The Ericae {207} are all quatrefoils, and quatrefoils of the most studied and accomplished symmetry; and they bear no berries, but only dry seeds. The Myrtillae and Aurorae are both Cinqfoil; but the Myrtillae are symmetrical in their blossom, and the Aurorae unsymmetrical. Farther, the Myrtillae are not absolutely determinate in the number of their foils, (this being essentially a characteristic of flowers exposed to much hards.h.i.+p,) and are thus sometimes quatrefoil, in sympathy with the Ericae.

But the Aurorae are strictly cinqfoil. These last are the only European form of a larger group, well named 'Azalea' from the Greek [Greek: aza], dryness, and its adjective [Greek: azalea], dry or parched; and _this_ name must be kept for the world-wide group, (including under it Rhododendron, but not Kalmia,) because there is an under-meaning in the word Aza, enabling it to be applied to the substance of dry earth, and indicating one of the great functions of the Oreiades, in common with the mosses,--the collection of earth upon rocks.

4. Neither the Ericae, as I have just said, nor Aurorae bear useful fruit; and the Ericae are named from their consequent worthlessness in the eyes of the Greek farmer; they were the plants he 'tore up' for his bed, or signal-fire, his word for them including a farther sense of crus.h.i.+ng or bruising into a heap. The Westmoreland shepherds now, alas! burn them remorselessly on the ground, (and a year since had nearly set the copse of Brantwood on fire just above the house.) The sense of {208} parched and fruitless existence is given to the heaths, with beautiful application of the context, in our English translation of Jeremiah xvii. 6; but I find the plant there named is, in the Septuagint, Wild Tamarisk; the mountains of Palestine being, I suppose, in that lat.i.tude, too low for heath, unless in the Lebanon.