When once these four families are well understood in typical examples,
how easy it will be to attach either subordinate groups or
specialities of habitat, as in America, to some kinds of them! The
entire order, for their purity and wildness, are to be named, from
Artemis, "Artemides", instead of Caryophyllaceae; and next them come
the Vestals (mints, lavenders, etc.); and then the Cytheride Viola,
Veronica, Giulietta, the last changed from Polygala.
That third Herb Robert one is just the drawing that nobody but me
(never mind grammar) could have made. Nobody! because it means ever so
much careful watching of the ways of the leaf, and a lot of work in
cramp perspective besides. It is not quite right yet, but it _is_
nice.
[Footnote 25: "Proserpina,"]
* * * * *
It is so nice to be able to find anything that is in the least
new to _you_, and interesting; my rocks are quite proud of
rooting that little saxifrage.
I'm scarcely able to look at one flower because of the two on each
side, in my garden just now. I want to have bees' eyes, there are so
many lovely things.
I must tell you, interrupting my botanical work this morning,
something that has just chanced to me.
I am arranging the caryophylls, which I mass broadly into "Clarissa,"
the true jagged-leaved and clove-scented ones; "Lychnis," those whose
leaves are essentially in two lobes; "Arenaria," which I leave
untouched; and "Mica," a new name of my own for the pearlworts of
which the French name is to be Miette, and the representative type
(now Sagina procumbens) is to be in--
_Latin_--Mica amica.
_French_--Miette l'amie.
_English_--Pet pearlwort.