SCIENCE IN HER CELLS.
[The following chapter has been written six years. It was delayed in
order to complete the promised clearer analysis of stem-structure;
which, after a great deal of chopping, chipping, and peeling of my oaks
and birches, came to reverently hopeless pause. What is here done may
yet have some use in pointing out to younger students how they may
simplify their language, and direct their thoughts, so as to attain, in
due time, to reverent hope.]
1. The most generally useful book, to myself, hitherto, in such little time
as I have for reading about plants, has been Lindley's 'Ladies' Botany';
but the most rich and true I have yet found in illustration, the 'Histoire
des Plantes,'[35] by Louis Figuier. I should like those of my readers who
can afford it to buy both these books; the first named, at any rate, as I
shall always refer to it for structural drawings, and on points of doubtful
classification; while the second contains much general knowledge, expressed
with some really human intelligence and feeling; besides some good and
singularly _just_ history of botanical discovery and the men who guided it.
The botanists, indeed, tell me proudly, "Figuier is no authority." But who
wants authority! Is there nothing known yet about plants, then, which can
be taught to a boy or girl, without referring them to an 'authority'?
I, for my own part, care only to gather what Figuier can teach concerning
things visible, to any boy or girl, who live within reach of a bramble
hedge, or a hawthorn thicket, and can find authority enough for what they
are told, in the sticks of them.
2. If only _he_ would, or could, tell us clearly that much; but like other
doctors, though with better meaning than most, he has learned mainly to
look at things with a microscope,--rarely with his eyes. And I am sorry to
see, on re-reading this chapter of my own, which is little more than an
endeavour to analyze and arrange the statements contained in his second,
that I have done it more petulantly and unkindly than I ought; but I can't
do all the work over again, now,--more's the pity. I have not looked at
this chapter for a year, and shall be sixty before I know where I am;--(I
find myself, instead, now, sixty-four!)
3. But I stand at once partly corrected in this second chapter of
Figuier's, on the 'Tige,' French from the Latin 'Tignum,' which
'authorities' say is again from the Sanscrit, and means 'the thing hewn
with an axe'; anyhow it is modern French for what we are to call the stem
(§ 12, p. 136).
"The tige," then, begins M. Louis, "is the axis of the ascending system of
a vegetable, and it is garnished at intervals with vital knots, (eyes,)
from which spring leaves and buds, disposed in a perfectly regular order.
The root presents nothing of the kind. This character permits us always to
distinguish, in the vegetable axis, what belongs really to the stem, and
what to the root."
4. Yes; and that is partly a new idea to me, for in this power of
_assigning their order_ for the leaves, the stem seems to take a royal or
commandant character, and cannot be merely defined as the connexion of the
leaf with the roots.
In _it_ is put the spirit of determination. One cannot fancy the little
leaf, as it is born, determining the point it will be born at: the
governing stem must determine that for it. Also the disorderliness of the
root is to be noted for a condition of its degradation, no less than its
love, and need, of Darkness.
Nor was I quite right (above, § 15, p. 139) in calling the stem _itself_
'spiral': it is itself a straight-growing rod, but one which, as it grows,
lays the buds of future leaves round it in a spiral order, like the
bas-relief on Trajan's column.
I go on with Figuier: the next passage is very valuable.
5. "The tige is the part of plants which, directed into the air, supports,
and _gives growing power to_, the branches, the twigs, the leaves, and the
flowers. The form, strength, and direction of the tige depend on the part
that each plant has to play among the vast vegetable population of our
globe. Plants which need for their life a pure and often-renewed air, are
borne by a straight tige, robust and tall. When they have need only of a
moist air, more condensed, and more rarely renewed, when they have to creep
on the ground or glide in thickets, the tiges are long, flexible, and
dragging. If they are to float in the air, sustaining themselves on more
robust vegetables, they are provided with flexible, slender, and supple
tiges."
6. Yes; but in that last sentence he loses hold of his main idea, and to me
the important one,--namely, the connexion of the form of stem with the
quality of the air it requires. And that idea itself is at present vague,
though most valuable, to me. A strawberry creeps, with a flexible stem, but
requires certainly no less pure air than a wood-fungus, which stands up
straight. And in our own hedges and woods, are the wild rose and
honeysuckle signs of unwholesome air?
"And honeysuckle loved to crawl
Up the lone crags and ruined wall.
I deemed such nooks the sweetest shade
The sun in all his round surveyed."
It seems to me, in the nooks most haunted by honeysuckle in my own wood,
that the reason for its twining is a very feminine one,--that it likes to
twine; and that all these whys and wherefores resolve themselves at last
into--what a modern philosopher, of course, cannot understand--caprice.[36]
7. Farther on, Figuier, quoting St. Hilaire, tells us, of the creepers in
primitive forests,--"Some of them resemble waving ribands, others coil
themselves and describe vast spirals; they droop in festoons, they wind
hither and thither among the trees, they fling themselves from one to
another, and form masses of leaves and flowers in which the observer is
often at a loss to discover on which plant each several blossom grows."
For all this, the real reasons will be known only when human beings become
reasonable. For, except a curious naturalist or wistful missionary, no
Christian has trodden the labyrinths of delight and decay among these
garlands, but men who had no other thought than how to cheat their savage
people out of their gold, and give them gin and smallpox in exchange. But,
so soon as true servants of Heaven shall enter these Edens, and the Spirit
of God enter with them, another spirit will also be breathed into the
physical air; and the stinging insect, and venomous snake, and poisonous
tree, pass away before the power of the regenerate human soul.
8. At length, on the structure of the tige, Figuier begins his real work,
thus:---
"A glance of the eye, thrown on the section of a log of wood destined for
warming, permits us to recognize that the tige of the trees of our forests
presents three essential parts, which are, in going from within to without,
the pith, the wood, and the bark. The pith, (in French, marrow,) forms a
sort of column in the centre of the woody axis. In very thick and old stems
its diameter appears very little; and it has even for a long time been
supposed that the marrow ends by disappearing altogether from the stems of
old trees. But it does nothing of the sort;[37] and it is now ascertained,
by exact measures, that its diameter remains sensibly invariable[38] from
the moment when the young woody axis begins to consolidate itself, to the
epoch of its most complete development."
So far, so good; but what does he mean by the complete development of the
young _woody_ axis? When does the axis become 'wooden,' and how far up the
tree does he call it an axis? If the stem divides into three branches,
which is the axis? And is the pith in the trunk no thicker than in each
branch?
9. He proceeds to tell us, "The marrow is formed by a reunion of
cells."--Yes, and so is Newgate, and so was the Bastille. But what does it
matter whether the marrow is made of a reunion of cells, or cellars, or
walls, or floors, or ceilings? I want to know what's the use of it? why
doesn't it grow bigger with the rest of the tree? when _does_ the tree
'consolidate itself'? when is it finally consolidated? and how can there be
always marrow in it when the weary frame of its age remains a mere scarred
tower of war with the elements, full of dust and bats?
[Illustration: FIG. 24.]
'He will tell you if only you go on patiently,' thinks the reader. He will
not! Once your modern botanist gets into cells, he stays in them. Hear how
he goes on!--"This cell is a sort of sack; this sack is completely closed;
sometimes it is empty, sometimes it"--is full?--no, that would be
unscientific simplicity: sometimes it "conceals a matter in its interior."
"The marrow of young trees, such as it is represented in Figure 24
(Figuier, Figs. 38, 39, p. 42), is nothing else"--(indeed!)--"than an
aggregation of cells, which, first of spherical form, have become
polyhedric by their increase and mutual compression."
10. Now these figures, 38 and 39, which profess to represent this change,
show us sixteen oval cells, such as at A, (Fig. 24) enlarged into thirteen
larger, and flattish, hexagons!--B, placed at a totally different angle.
And before I can give you the figure revised with any available accuracy, I
must know why or how the cells are enlarged, and in what direction.
Do their walls lengthen laterally when they are empty, or does the
'matière' inside stuff them more out, (itself increased from what sources?)
when they are full? In either case, during this change from circle to
hexagon, is the marrow getting thicker without getting longer? If so, the
change in the angle of the cells is intentional, and probably is so; but
the number of cells should have been the same: and further, the term
'hexagonal' can only be applied to the _section_ of a tubular cell, as in
honeycomb, so that the floor and ceiling of our pith cell are left
undescribed.
11. Having got thus much of (partly conjectural) idea of the mechanical
structure of marrow, here follows the solitary vital, or mortal, fact in
the whole business, given in one crushing sentence at the close:---
"The medullary tissue" (first time of using this fine phrase for the
marrow,--why can't he say marrowy tissue--'tissue moelleuse'?) "appears
very early struck with atony," ('atonic,' want of tone,) "above all, in its
central parts." And so ends all he has to say for the present about the
marrow! and it never appears to occur to him for a moment, that if indeed
the noblest trees live all their lives in a state of healthy and robust
paralysis, it is a distinction, hitherto unheard of, between vegetables and
animals!
12. Two pages farther on, however, (p. 45,) we get more about the marrow,
and of great interest,--to this effect, for I must abstract and complete
here, instead of translating.
"The marrow itself is surrounded, as the centre of an electric cable is, by
its guarding threads--that is to say, by a number of cords or threads
coming between it and the wood, and differing from all others in the tree.
"The entire protecting cylinder composed of them has been called the
'étui,' (or needle-case,) of the marrow. But each of the cords which
together form this étui, is itself composed of an almost infinitely
delicate thread twisted into a screw, like the common spring of a
letter-weigher or a Jack-in-the-box, but of exquisite fineness." Upon this,
two pages and an elaborate figure are given to these 'trachées'--tracheas,
the French call them,--and we are never told the measure of them, either in
diameter or length,[39] and still less, the use of them!
I collect, however, in my thoughts, what I have learned thus far.
13. A tree stem, it seems, is a growing thing, cracked outside, because its
skin won't stretch, paralysed inside, because its marrow won't grow, but
which continues the process of its life somehow, by knitted nerves without
any nervous energy in them, protected by spiral springs without any spring
in them.
Stay--I am going too fast. That coiling is perhaps prepared for some kind
of uncoiling; and I will try if I can't learn something about it from some
other book--noticing, as I pause to think where to look, the advantage of
our English tongue in its pithy Saxon word, 'pith,' separating all our
ideas of vegetable structure clearly from animal; while the poor Latin and
French must use the entirely inaccurate words 'medulla' and 'moelle'; all,
however, concurring in their recognition of a vital power of some essential
kind in this white cord of cells: "Medulla, sive illa vitalis anima est,
ante se tendit, longitudinem impellens." (Pliny, 'Of the Vine,' liber X.,
cap. xxi.) 'Vitalis anima'--yes--_that_ I accept; but 'longitudinem
impellens,' I pause at; being not at all clear, yet, myself, about any
impulsive power in the pith.[40]
14. However, I take up first, and with best hope, Dr. Asa Gray, who tells
me (Art. 211) that pith consists of parenchyma, 'which is at first gorged
with sap,' but that many stems expand so rapidly that their pith is torn
into a mere lining or into horizontal plates; and that as the stem grows
older, the pith becomes dry and light, and is 'then of no farther use to
the plant.' But of what use it ever was, we are not informed; and the
Doctor makes us his bow, so far as the professed article on pith goes; but,
farther on, I find in his account of 'Sap-wood,' (Art. 224.) that in the
germinating plantlet, the sap 'ascends first through the parenchyma,
especially through its central portion or pith.' Whereby we are led back to
our old question, what sap is, and where it comes from, with the now
superadded question, whether the young pith is a mere succulent sponge, or
an active power, and constructive mechanism, nourished by the abundant sap:
as Columella has it,--
"Naturali enim spiritu omne alimentum virentis quasi quædam anima, per
_medullam_ trunci veluti per siphonem, trahitur in summum."[41]
As none of these authors make any mention of a _communication_ between the
cells of the pith, I conclude that the sap they are filled with is taken up
by them, and used to construct their own thickening tissue.
15. Next, I take Balfour's 'Structural Botany,' and by his index, under the
word 'Pith,' am referred to his articles 8, 72, and 75. In article 8,
neither the word pith, nor any expression alluding to it, occurs.
In article 72, the stem of an outlaid tree is defined as consisting of
'pith, fibro-vascular and [42] woody tissue, medullary rays, bark, and
epidermis.'
A more detailed statement follows, illustrated by a figure surrounded by
twenty-three letters--namely, two _b_ s, three _c_ s, four _e_ s, three _f_
s, one _l_, four _m_ s, three _p_ s, one _r_, and two _v_ s.
Eighteen or twenty minute sputters of dots may, with a good lens, be
discerned to proceed from this alphabet, and to stop at various points, or
lose themselves in the texture, of the represented wood. And, knowing now
something of the matter beforehand, guessing a little more, and gleaning
the rest with my finest glass, I achieve the elucidation of the figure, to
the following extent, explicable without letters at all, by my more simple
drawing, Figure 25.
16. (1) The inner circle full of little cells, diminishing in size towards
the outside, represents the pith, 'very large at this period of the
growth'--(the first year, we are told in next page,) and 'very large'--he
means in proportion to the rest of the branch. _How_ large he does not say,
in his text, but states, in his note, that the figure is magnified 26
diameters. I have drawn mine by the more convenient multiplier of 30, and
given the real size at B, _according to Balfour_:--but without believing
him to be right. I never saw a maple stem of the first year so small.
[Illustration: FIG. 25.]
(2) The black band with white dots round the marrow, represents the
marrow-sheath.
(3) From the marrow-sheath run the marrow-rays 'dividing the vascular
circle into numerous compact segments.' A 'ray' cannot divide anything into
a segment. Only a partition, or a knife, can do that. But we shall find
presently that marrow _rays_ ought to be called marrow-_plates_, and are
really mural, forming more or less continuous partitions.
(4) The compact segments 'consist of woody vessels and of porous vessels.'
This is the first we have heard of woody _vessels_! He means the '_fibres_
ligneux' of Figuier; and represents them in each compartment, as at C (Fig.
25). without telling us why he draws the woody vessels as radiating. They
appear to radiate, indeed, when wood is sawn across, but they are really
upright.
(5) A moist layer of greenish cellular tissue called the cambium
layer--black in Figure 25--and he draws it in flat arches, without saying
why.
(6), (7), (8) Three layers of bark (called in his note Endophloeum;
Mesophloeum, and Epiphloeum!) with 'laticiferous vessels.' [43]
(9) Epidermis. The three layers of bark being separated by single lines, I
indicate the epidermis by a double one, with a rough fringe outside, and
thus we have the parts of the section clearly visible and distinct for
discussion, so far as this first figure goes,--without wanting one letter
of all his three and twenty!
17. But on the next page, this ingenious author gives us a new figure,
which professes to represent the same order of things in a longitudinal
section; and in retracing that order sideways, instead of looking down, he
not only introduces new terms, but misses one of his old layers in doing
so,--thus:
His order, in explaining Figure 96, contains, as above, nine members of the
tree stem.
But his order, in explaining Figure 97, contains only eight, thus:
(1) The pith. (2) Medullary sheath. Circles.
(3) Medullary ray = a Radius.
(4) Vascular zone, with woody _fibres_ (not now vessels!) The fibres are
composed of spiral, annular, pitted, and other vessels.
(5) Inner bark or 'liber,' with layer of cambium cells.
(6) Second layer of bark, or 'cellular envelope,' with laticiferous
vessels.
(7) Outer or tuberous layer of bark.
(8) Epidermis.
Doing the best I can to get at the muddle-headed gentleman's meaning, it
appears, by the lettering of his Figure 97, my 25 above, that the 'liber,'
number 5, contains the cambium layer in the middle of it. The part of the
liber between the cambium and the wood is not marked in Figure 96;--but the
cambium is number 5, and the liber outside of it is number 6,--the
Endophloeum of his note.
[Illustration: FIG. 26.]
Having got himself into this piece of lovely confusion, he proceeds to give
a figure of the wood in the second year, which I think he has borrowed,
without acknowledgment, from Figuier, omitting a piece of Figuier's woodcut
which is unexplained in Figuier's text. I will spare my readers the work I
have had to do, in order to get the statements on either side clarified:
but I think they will find, if they care to work through the wilderness of
the two authors' wits, that this which follows is the sum of what they have
effectively to tell us; with the collated list of the main questions they
leave unanswered--and, worse, unasked.
18. An ordinary tree branch, in transverse section, consists essentially of
three parts only,--the Pith, Wood, and Bark.
The pith is in full animation during the first year--that is to say, during
the actual shooting of the wood. We are left to infer that in the second
year, the pith of the then unprogressive shoot becomes collective only, not
formative; and that the pith of the new shoot virtually energizes the new
wood in its deposition beside the old one. Thus, let _a b_, Figure 26, be a
shoot of the first year, and _b c_ of the second. The pith remains of the
same thickness in both, but that of the new shoot is, I suppose, chiefly
active in sending down the new wood to thicken the old one, which is
collected, however, and fastened by the extending pith-rays below. You see,
I have given each shoot four fibres of wood for its own; then the four
fibres of the upper one send out two to thicken the lower: the pith-rays,
represented by the white transverse claws, catch and gather all together.
Mind, I certify nothing of this to you; but if this do not happen,--let the
botanists tell you what _does_.
19. Secondly. The wood, represented by these four lines, is to be always
remembered as consisting of fibres and vessels; therefore it is called
'vascular,' a word which you may as well remember (though rarely needed in
familiar English), with its roots, _vas_, a vase, and _vasculum_, a little
vase or phial. 'Vascule' may sometimes be allowed in botanical descriptions
where 'cell' is not clear enough; thus, at present, we find our botanists
calling the pith 'cellular' but the wood 'vascular,' with, I think, the
implied meaning that a 'vascule,' little or large, is a long thing, and has
some liquid in it, while a 'cell' is a more or less round thing, and to be
supposed empty, unless described as full. But what liquid fills the
vascules of the wood, they do not tell us.[44] I assume that they absorb
water, as long as the tree lives.
[Illustration: FIG. 27.]
20. Wood, whether vascular or fibrous, is however formed, in outlaid
plants, first outside of the pith, and then, in shoots of the second year,
outside of the wood of the first, and in the third year, outside of the
wood of the second; so that supposing the quantity of wood sent down from
the growing shoot distributed on a flat plane, the structure in the third
year would be as in Figure 27. But since the new wood is distributed all
round the stem, (in successive cords or threads, if not at once), the
increase of substance after a year or two would be untraceable, unless more
shoots than one were formed at the extremity of the branch. Of actual bud
and branch structure, I gave introductory account long since in the fifth
volume of 'Modern Painters.'[45] to which I would now refer the reader; but
both then, and to-day, after twenty years' further time allowed me, I am
unable to give the least explanation of the mode in which the wood is
really added to the interior stem. I cannot find, even, whether this is
mainly done in springtime, or in the summer and autumn, when the young
suckers form on the wood; but my impression is that though all the several
substances are added annually, a little more pith going to the edges of the
pith-plates, and a little more bark to the bark, with a great deal more
wood to the wood,--there is a different or at least successive period for
each deposit, the carrying all these elements to their places involving a
fineness of basket work or web work in the vessels, which neither
microscope nor dissecting tool can disentangle. The result on the whole,
however, is practically that we have, outside the wood, always a mysterious
'cambium layer,' and then some distinctions in the bark itself, of which we
must take separate notice.
21. Of Cambium, Dr. Gray's 220th article gives the following account. "It
is not a distinct substance, but a layer of delicate new cells full of sap.
The inner portion of the cambium layer is, therefore, nascent wood, and the
outer nascent bark. As the cells of this layer multiply, the greater number
lengthen vertically into _prosenchyma_, or woody tissue, while some are
transformed into ducts" (wood vessels?) "and others remaining as
_parenchyma_, continue the medullary rays, or commence new ones." Nothing
is said here of the part of the cambium which becomes bark: but at page
128, the thin walled cells of the bark are said to be those of ordinary
'parenchyma,' and in the next page a very important passage occurs, which
must have a paragraph to itself. I close the present one with one more
protest against the entirely absurd terms 'par-enchyma,' for common
cellular tissue, 'pros-enchyma,' for cellular tissue with longer
cells;--'cambium' for an early state of _both_, and 'diachyma' for a
peculiar position of _one_![46] while the chemistry of all these substances
is wholly neglected, and we have no idea given us of any difference in
pith, wood, and bark, than that they are made of short or long--young or
old--cells!
22. But in Dr. Gray's 230th article comes this passage of real value.
(Italics mine--all.) "While the newer layers of the wood abound in _crude_
sap, which they convey to the leaves, those of the inner bark abound in
_elaborated_ sap, which _they receive from the leaves_, and convey to the
_cambium_ layer, or _zone of growth_. The proper juices and peculiar
products of plants are accordingly found in the foliage and bark,
especially the latter. In the bark, therefore, either of the stem or root,
medicinal and other principles are usually to be sought, rather than in the
wood. Nevertheless, as the wood is kept in connection with the bark by the
medullary rays, many products which probably originate in the former are
deposited in the wood."
23. Now, at last, I see my way to useful summary of the whole, which I had
better give in a separate chapter: and will try in future to do the
preliminary work of elaboration of the sap from my authorities, above
shown, in its process, to the reader, without making so much fuss about it.
But, I think in this case, it was desirable that the floods of pros-, par-,
peri-, dia-, and circumlocution, through which one has to wade towards any
emergent crag of fact in modern scientific books, should for once be seen
in the wasteful tide of them; that so I might finally pray the younger
students who feel, or remember, their disastrous sway, to cure themselves
for ever of the fatal habit of imagining that they know more of anything
after naming it unintelligibly, and thinking about it impudently, than they
did by loving sight of its nameless being, and in wise confession of its
boundless mystery.
* * * * *
In re-reading the text of this number I can secure my young readers of some
things left doubtful, as, for instance, in their acceptance of the word
'Monacha,' for the flower described in the sixth chapter. I have used it
now habitually too long to part with it myself, and I think it will be
found serviceable and pleasurable by others. Neither shall I now change the
position of the Draconidae, as suggested at p. 118, but keep all as first
planned. See among other reasons for doing so the letter quoted in p. 121.
I also add to the plate originally prepared for this number, one showing
the effect of Veronica officinalis in decoration of foreground, merely by
its green leaves; see the paragraphs 1 and 5 of Chapter VI. I have not
represented the fine serration of the leaves, as they are quite invisible
from standing height: the book should be laid on the floor and looked down
on, without stooping, to see the effect intended. And so I gladly close
this long-lagging number, hoping never to write such a tiresome chapter as
this again, or to make so long a pause between any readable one and its
sequence.
* * * * *
NOTES
[1] Vol. i., p. 212, note.
[2] See 'Deucalion,' vol. ii., chap, i., p. 12, § 18.
[3] I am ashamed to give so rude outlines; but every moment now is valuable
to me: careful outline of a dog-violet is given in Plate X.
[4] A careless bit of Byron's, (the last song but one in the 'Deformed
Transformed'); but Byron's most careless work is better, by its innate
energy, than other people's most laboured. I suppress, in some doubts about
my 'digamma,' notes on the Greek violet and the Ion of Euripides;--which
the reader will perhaps be good enough to fancy a serious loss to him, and
supply for himself.
[5] Nine; I see that I missed count of P. farinosa, the most abundant of
all.
[6] "A feeble little quatrefoil--growing one on the stem, like a Parnassia,
and looking like a Parnassia that had dropped a leaf. I think it drops one
of its own four, mostly, and lives as three-fourths of itself, for most of
its time. Stamens pale gold. Root-leaves, three or four, grass-like;
growing among the moist moss chiefly."
[7] The great work of Lecoq, 'Geographic Botanique,' is of priceless value;
but treats all on too vast a scale for our purposes.
[8] It is, I believe, Sowerby's Viola Lutea, 721 of the old edition, there
painted with purple upper petals; but he says in the text, "Petals either
all yellow, or the two uppermost are of a blue purple, the rest yellow with
a blue tinge: very often the whole are purple."
[9] Did the wretch never hear bees in a lime tree then, or ever see one on
a star gentian?
[10] Septuagint, "the eyes of doves out of thy silence." Vulgate, "the eyes
of doves, besides that which is hidden in them." Meaning--the _dim_ look of
love, beyond all others in sweetness.
[11] When I have the chance, and the time, to submit the proofs of
'Proserpina' to friends who know more of Botany than I, or have kindness
enough to ascertain debateable things for me, I mean in future to do
so,--using the letter A to signify Amicus, generally; with acknowledgment
by name, when it is permitted, of especial help or correction. Note first
of this kind: I find here on this word, 'five-petaled,' as applied to
Pinguicula, "Qy. two-lipped? it is monopetalous, and monosepalous, the
calyx and corolla being each all in one piece."
Yes; and I am glad to have the observation inserted. But my term,
'five-petaled,' must stand. For the question with me is always first, not
how the petals are connected, but how many they are. Also I have accepted
the term petal--but never the word lip--as applied to flowers. The generic
term 'Labiatæ' is cancelled in 'Proserpina,' 'Vestales' being substituted;
and these flowers, when I come to examine them, are to be described, not as
divided into two lips, but into hood, apron, and side-pockets. Farther, the
depth to which either calyx or corolla is divided, and the firmness with
which the petals are attached to the torus, may, indeed, often be an
important part of the plant's description, but ought not to be elements in
its definition. Three petaled and three-sepaled, four-petaled and
four-sepaled, five-petaled and five-sepaled, etc., etc., are
essential--with me, primal--elements of definition; next, whether resolute
or stellar in their connection; next, whether round or pointed, etc. Fancy,
for instance, the fatality to a rose of pointing its petals, and to a lily,
of rounding them! But how deep cut, or how hard holding, is quite a minor
question.
Farther, that all plants _are_ petaled and sepaled, and never mere cups in
saucers, is a great fact, not to be dwelt on in a note.
[12] Our 'Lucia Nivea,' 'Blanche Lucy;' in present botany, Bog bean! having
no connection whatever with any manner of bean, but only a slight
resemblance to bean-_leaves_ in its own lower ones. Compare Ch. IV. § 11.
[13] It is not. (Resolute negative from A., unsparing of time for me; and
what a state of things it all signifies!)
[14] With the following three notes, 'A' must become a definitely and
gratefully interpreted letter. I am indebted for the first, conclusive in
itself, but variously supported and confirmed by the two following, to R.J.
Mann, Esq., M.D., long ago a pupil of Dr. Lindley's, and now on the council
of Whitelands College, Chelsea:--for the second, to Mr. Thomas Moore,
F.L.S., the kind Keeper of the Botanic Garden at Chelsea; for the third,
which will be farther on useful to us, to Miss Kemm, the botanical lecturer
at Whitelands.
(1) There is no explanation of Lentibulariaceæ in Lindley's 'Vegetable
Kingdom.' He was not great in that line. The term is, however, taken from
_Lenticula_, the lentil, in allusion to the lentil-shaped air-bladders of
the typical genus _Utricularia_.
The change of the c into b may possibly have been made only from some
euphonic fancy of the contriver of the name, who, I think, was Rich.
But I somewhat incline myself to think that the _tibia_, a pipe or flute,
may have had something to do with it. The _tibia_ may possibly have been
diminished into a little pipe by a stretch of licence, and have become
_tibula_: [but _tibulus_ is a kind of pine tree in Pliny]; when _Len
tibula_ would be the lens or lentil-shaped pipe or bladder. I give you this
only for what it is worth. The _lenticula_, as a derivation, is reliable
and has authority.
_Lenticula_, a lentil, a freckly eruption; _lenticularis_, lentil-shaped;
so the nat. ord. ought to be (if this be right) _lenticulariaceæ_.
(2) BOTANIC GARDENS, CHELSEA, _Feb._ 14, 1882.
_Lentibularia_ is an old generic name of Tournefort's, which has been
superseded by _utricularia,_ but, oddly enough, has been retained in the
name of the order _lentibulareæ_; but it probably comes from _lenticula_,
which signifies the little root bladders, somewhat resembling lentils.
(3) 'Manual of Scientific Terms,' Stormonth, p. 234.
_Lentibulariaceæ_, neuter, plural.
(_Lenticula_, the shape of a lentil; from _lens_, a lentil.) The Butterwort
family, an order of plants so named from the lenticular shape of the
air-bladders on the branches of utricularia, one of the genera. (But
observe that the _Butterworts_ have nothing of the sort, any of them.--R.)
Loudon.--"Floaters."
Lindley.--"Sometimes with whorled vesicles."
In Nuttall's Standard (?) Pronouncing Dictionary, it is given,--
_Lenticulareæ_, a nat. ord. of marsh plants, which thrive in water or
marshes.
[15] More accurately, shows the pruned roots of branches,--[Greek: epeidê
prota tomên en horessi lelotpen]. The _pruning_ is the mythic expression of
the subduing of passion by rectorial law.
[16] The bitter sorrow with which I first recognized the extreme rarity of
finely-developed organic sight is expressed enough in the lecture on the
Mystery of Life, added in the large edition of 'Sesame and Lilies.'
[17] Lat. acesco, to turn sour.
[18] Withering quotes this as from Linnæus, and adds on authority of a Mr.
Hawkes, "This did not succeed when tried with cows' milk." He also gives as
another name, Yorkshire Sanicle; and says it is called _earning grass_ in
Scotland. Linnæus says the juice will curdle reindeer's milk. The name for
rennet is _earning_, in Lincolnshire. Withering also gives this note:
"_Pinguis_, fat, from its effect in CONGEALING milk."--(A.) Withering of
course wrong: the name comes, be the reader finally assured, from the
fatness of the green leaf, quite peculiar among wild plants, and fastened
down for us in the French word 'Grassette.' I have found the flowers also
difficult to dry, in the benighted early times when I used to think a dried
plant useful! See closing paragraphs of the *4th chapter.--R.
[19] I find much more difficulty, myself, being old, in using my altered
names for species than my young scholars will. In watching the bells of the
purple bindweed fade at evening, let them learn the fourth verse of the
prayer of Hezekiah, as it is in the Vulgate--"Generatio mea ablata est, et
convoluta est a me, sicut tabernaculum pastoris,"--and they will not forget
the name of the fast-fading--ever renewed--"belle d'un jour."
[20] "It is Miss Cobbe, I think, who says 'all wild flowers know how to die
gracefully.'"--A.
[21] See distinction between recumbent and rampant herbs, below, under
'Veronica Agrestis,' p. 72.
[22] 'Abstracted' rather, I should have said, and with perfect skill, by
Mr. Collingwood (the joint translator of Xenophon's Economics for the
'Bibliotheca Pastorum'). So also the next following cut, Fig. 5.
[23] Of the references, henceforward necessary to the books I have used as
authorities, the reader will please note the following abbreviations:--
C. Curtis's Magazine of Botany.
D. Flora Danica.
F. Figuier.
G. Sibthorpe's Flora Græca.
L. Linnæus. Systema Naturæ.
L.S. Linnæus's Flora Suecica. But till we are quite used to the other
letters, I print this reference in words.
L.N. William Curtis's Flora Londinensis. Of the exquisite plates
engraved for this book by James Sowerby, note is taken in the close of
next chapter.
O. Sowerby's English Wild Flowers; the old edition in thirty-two thin
volumes--far the best.
S. Sowerby's English Wild Flowers; the modern edition in ten volumes.
[24] See letter on the last results of our African campaigns, in the
_Morning Post_ of April 14th, of this year.
[25] I deliberately, not garrulously, allow more autobiography in
'Proserpina' than is becoming, because I know not how far I may be
permitted to carry on that which was begun in 'Fors.'
[26] In present Botany, Polygala Chamæbuxus; C. 316: or, in English, Much
Milk Ground-box. It is not, as matters usually go, a name to be ill thought
of, as it really contains three ideas; and the plant does, without doubt,
somewhat resemble box, and grows on the ground;--far more fitly called
'ground-box' than the Veronica 'ground-oak.' I want to find a pretty name
for it in connection with Savoy or Dauphine, where it indicates, as above
stated, the _healthy_ districts of _hard_ limestone. I do not remember it
as ever occurring among the dark and moist shales of the inner mountain
ranges, which at once confine and pollute the air.
[27] Which, with the following page, is the summary of many chapters of
'Modern Painters:' and of the aims kept in view throughout 'Munera
Pulveris.' The three kinds of Desert specified--of Reed, Sand, and
Rock--should be kept in mind as exhaustively including the states of the
earth neglected by man. For instance of a Reed desert, produced _merely_ by
his neglect, see Sir Samuel Baker's account of the choking up of the bed of
the White Nile. Of the sand desert, Sir F. Palgrave's journey from the
Djowf to Hayel, vol. i., p. 92.
[28] This subject is first entered on in the 'Seven Lamps,' and carried
forward in the final chapters of 'Modern Painters,'to the point where I
hope to take it up for conclusion, in the sections of 'Our Fathers have
told us' devoted to the history of the fourteenth century.
[29] See in the first volume, the plates of Sonchus Arvensis and Tussilago
Petasites; in the second, Carduus tomentosus and Picris Echioides.
[30] For the sense in which this word is used throughout my writings, see
the definition of it in the 52nd paragraph of the 'Queen of the Air,'
comparing with respect to its office in plants, §§ 59-60.
[31] Written in 1880.
[32] The plate of Chamædrys, D. 448, is also quite right, and not 'too tall
and weedlike,' as I have called it at p. 72.
[33] "Stems numerous from the crown of the root-stock, de-cumbent."--S. The
effect of the flower upon the ground is always of an extremely upright and
separate plant, never appearing in clusters, (I meant, in close masses - it
forms exquisite little rosy crowds, on ground that it likes) or in any
relation to a central root. My epithet 'rosea' does not deny its botanical
de- or pro-cumbency.
[34] Compare especially Galeopsis Angustifolia, D. 3031.
[35] Octavo: Paris, Hachette, 1865.
[36] See in the ninth chapter what I have been able, since this sentence
was written, to notice on the matter in question.
[37] I envy the French their generalized form of denial, 'Il n'en est
rien.'
[38] 'Sensiblement invariable;' 'unchanged, _so far as we can see,_' or to
general sense; microscopic and minute change not being considered.
[39] Moreover, the confusion between vertical and horizontal sections in
pp. 46, 47, is completed by the misprint of vertical for horizontal in the
third line of p. 43, and of horizontal for vertical in the fifth line from
bottom of p. 46; while Figure 45 is to me totally unintelligible, this
being, as far as can be made out by the lettering, a section of a tree stem
which has its marrow on the outside!
[40] "Try a bit of rhubarb" (says A, who sends me a pretty drawing of
rhubarb pith); but as rhubarb does not grow into wood, inapplicable to our
present subject; and if we descend to annual plants, rush pith is the thing
to be examined.
[41] I am too lazy now to translate, and shall trust to the chance of some
remnant, among my readers, of classical study, even in modern England.
[42] '_Or_ woody tissue,' suggests A. It is 'and' in Balfour.
[43] Terms not used now, but others quite as bad: Cuticle, Epidermis,
Cortical layer, Periderm, Cambium, Phelloderm--six hard words for 'BARK,'
says my careful annotator. "Yes; and these new six to be changed for six
newer ones next year, no doubt."
[44] "At first the vessels are pervious and full of _fluid_, but by degrees
thickening layers are deposited, which contract their canal."--BALFOUR.
[45] I cannot better this earlier statement, which in beginning
'Proserpina,' I intended to form a part of that work; but, as readers
already in possession of it in the original form, ought not to be burdened
with its repetition, I shall republish those chapters as a supplement,
which I trust may be soon issued.
[46] "'Diachyma' is parenchyma in the middle of a leaf!" (Balfour, Art.
137.) Henceforward, if I ever make botanical quotations, I shall always
call parenchyma, By-tis; prosenchyma, To-tis; and diachyma, Through-tis,
short for By-tissue, To-tissue, and Through-tissue--then the student will
see what all this modern wisdom comes to!