Notes

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_ [1] At least, it throws off its flowers on each side in a bewilderingly pretty way; a real lily can't branch, I believe: but, if not, what is the use of the botanical books saying "on an unbranched stem"?

[2] I have by happy chance just added to my Oxford library the poet Gray's copy of Linnaeus, with its exquisitely written Latin notes, exemplary alike to scholar and naturalist.

[3] It was in the year 1860, in June.

[4] Admirably engraved by Mr. Burgess, from my pen drawing, now at Oxford. By comparing it with the plate of the same flower in Sowerby's work, the student will at once see the difference between attentive drawing, which gives the cadence and relation of masses in a group, and the mere copying of each flower in an unconsidered huddle.

[5] "Histoire des Plantes." Ed. 1865, p. 416.

[6] The like of it I have now painted, Number 281, CASE XII., in the Educational Series of Oxford.

[7] Properly, Florae Danicae, but it is so tiresome to print the diphthongs that I shall always call it thus. It is a folio series, exquisitely begun, a hundred years ago; and not yet finished.

[8] Magnified about seven times. See note at end of this chapter.

[9] American,--'System of Botany,' the best technical book I have.

[10] 'Dicranum cerviculatum,' sequel to Flora Danica, Tab. MMCCX.

[11] The reader should buy a small specimen of this mineral; it is a useful type of many structures.

[12] LUCCA, _Aug. 9th, 1874._--I have left this passage as originally written, but I believe the dome is of accumulated earth. Bringing home, here, evening after evening, heaps of all kinds of mosses from the hills among which the Archbishop Ruggieri was hunting the wolf and her whelps in Ugolino's dream, I am more and more struck, every day, with their special function as earth-gatherers, and with the enormous importance to their own brightness, and to our service, of that dark and degraded state of the inferior leaves. And it fastens itself in my mind mainly as their distinctive character, that as the leaves of a tree become wood, so the leaves of a moss become earth, while yet a normal part of the plant. Here is a cake in my hand weighing half a pound, bright green on the surface, with minute crisp leaves; but an inch thick beneath in what looks at first like clay, but is indeed knitted fibre of exhausted moss. Also, I don't at all find the generalization I made from the botanical books likely to have occurred to me from the real things. No moss leaves that I can find here give me the idea of resemblance to pineapple leaves; nor do I see any, through my weak lens, clearly serrated; but I do find a general tendency to run into a silky filamentous structure, and in some, especially on a small one gathered from the fissures in the marble of the cathedral, white threads of considerable length at the extremities of the leaves, of which threads I remember no drawing or notice in the botanical books. Figure 1 represents, magnified, a cluster of these leaves, with the germinating stalk springing from their centre; but my scrawl was tired and careless, and for once, Mr. Burgess has copied _too_ accurately.

[13] Learn this word, at any rate; and if you know any Greek, learn also this group of words: "[Greek: hos rhiza en ge dipsosei]," which you may chance to meet with, and even to think about, some day.

[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 grasses 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 nobody need describe them; and unknown plants be so rare that nobody 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 pass 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 pass. 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 quantities 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 passages 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 passage 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 passage, given in the 'Saturday 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 illustrates his theory of poetical hieroglyphs by no quotations, but we can show the manner of his minute and sometimes fanciful criticism by repeating his analysis of the passage of Virgil wherein the death of Euryalus is described:--

'Pulchrosque per artus
It cruor, inque humeros cervix collapsa recumbit;
Purpureus veluti cum flos succisus aratro
Languescit moriens; lassove papavera collo
Demisere caput, pluvia cum forte gravantur.'

"The sound of 'It cruor,' according to Diderot, suggests the image of a jet of blood; 'cervix collapsa recumbit,' 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 passage. '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 assertions 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 assertion 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:--

Angraecum.
Anisopetalum.
Brassavola.
Brassia.
Caelogyne.
Calopogon.
Corallorrhiza.
Cryptarrhena.
Eulophia.
Gymnadenia.
Microstylis.
Octomeria.
Ornithidium.
Ornithocephalus.
Platanthera.
Pleurothallis.
Pogonia.
Polystachya.
Prescotia.
Renanthera.
Rodriguezia.
Stenorhyncus.
Trizeuxis.
Xylobium.

[52] Compare Chapter V., Sec. 7.

[53] "Jacinthus Jurae," changed from "Hyacinthus Comosus."

[54]

"Cantando, e scegliendo fior di fiore
Onde era picta tutta la sua via."--_Purg._, xxviii. 35.

[55] "[Greek: kai theoisi terpna.]"

[56] The four races of this order are more naturally distinct than botanists have recognized. In Clarissa, the petal is cloven into a fringe at the outer edge; in Lychnis, the petal is terminated in two rounded lobes and the fringe withdrawn to the top of the limb; in Scintilla, the petal is divided into two _sharp_ lobes, without any fringe of the limb; and in Mica, the minute and scarcely visible flowers have simple and far separate petals. The confusion of these four great natural races under the vulgar or accidental botanical names of spittle-plant, shore-plant, sand plant, etc., has become entirely intolerable by any rational student; but the names 'Scintilla,' substituted for Stellaria, and 'Mica' for the utterly ridiculous and probably untrue Sagina, connect themselves naturally with Lychnis, in expression of the luminous power of the white and sparkling blossoms.

[57] Clytia will include all the true sun-flowers, and Falconia the hawkweeds; but I have not yet completed the analysis of this vast and complex order, so as to determine the limits of Margarita and Alcestis.

[58] The reader must observe that the positions given in this more developed system to any flower do not interfere with arrangements either formerly or hereafter given for memoria technica. The name of the pea, for instance (alata), is to be learned first among the twelve cinqfoils, p. 214, above; then transferred to its botanical place.

[59] The amphibious habit of this race is to me of more importance than its outlaid structure.

[60] "Arctostaphylos Alpina," I believe; but scarcely recognize the flower in my botanical books.

[61] 'Aurora Regina,' changed from Rhododendron Ferrugineum.

[62] I do not see what this can mean. Primroses and cowslips can't become shrubs; nor can violets, nor daisies, nor any other of our pet meadow flowers.

[63] 'Deserts.' Punas is not in my Spanish dictionary, and the reference to a former note is wrong in my edition of Humboldt, vol. iii., p. 490.

[64] "The Alpine rose of equinoctial America," p. 453.

[65] More literally "persons to whom the care of eggs is entrusted."

[66] A most singular sign of this function is given to the chemistry of the changes, according to a French botanist, to whose carefully and richly illustrated volume I shall in future often refer my readers, "Vers l'epoque de la maturite, les fruits _exhalent de l'acide carbonique_. Ils ne presentent plus des lors aucun degagement d'oxygene pendant le jour, et _respirent, pour ainsi dire, a la facon des animaux_."--(Figuier, 'Histoire des Plantes,' p. 182. 8vo. Paris. Hachette. 1874.)

[67] 'Elements of Chemistry,' p. 44. By Edward Turner; edited by Justus Liebig and William Gregory. Taylor and Walton, 1840.

* * * * *

Corrections made to printed original.

p.27. "In Greek, [Greek: rhiza]" - "[Greek: riza]" with soft breath mark in original.

p.62. "shall it not be said of England?" - "no be said" in original.

ibid. "beneficent in fulfilment" - "benet ficent" (across 2 lines) in original.

p.71. "flaunting breadth of untenable purple" - "untenabie" in original.

p.145. "to warn them that this trial of their lovers" - "warm them" in original.

p.195. "XI. HESPERIDES." - "II." in original.

p.238. "at page 26" - "at page 29" in original.

ibid. "at page 65" - "at page 73" in original.

Index II. "Celandine" - "Calendine" in original.

Ibid. "Thistle, ... 151." "151 note" in original.

Ibid. "Thistle, Waste, 138" - "154" in original.

Index III. "Fraxinus" - "Frarinus" in original.

[THE END]
John Ruskin's Book: Proserpina, Volume 1

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