[Illustration: FIG. 20.]

If you have seen--and who has not?--the flowers of the potato-plant,

you will immediately recognise the flowers of the Garden or Black

Nightshade. (Fig. 19.) This noxious herb--noxious in some, but

useful in other respects, and, therefore, not to be visited with too

hasty a condemnation--flowers and fructifies throughout the year.

Its fertility is extreme; only the severest winter-frosts can crush

out its prolific life. The fruits which succeed to the flowers are

smaller berries or "apples" than those of the potato. (See Fig. 20.)

In the history of botany, and even in that of philosophy, the Black

Nightshade (_Solanum nigrum_) has a certain interest. Thus, says

M. Hoefer, both Cordus and Jean Bauhin, botanists of the sixteenth

century, have described the flower of this plant as if its corolla

were composed of five distinct petals.

[Illustration: FIG. 21.]

Where were the eyes of those great botanists? The corolla of the

nightshade, like that of all the _Solanaceæ_, is plainly and

obviously monopetalous,--that is, composed of a single piece; to

assure yourself of this, you have but to open it out. (See Fig.

21, _b_.) It was the sharp-pointed, ovate divisions of the limb

which imposed on the old observers; a fresh proof that _seeing_ and

_observing_ are two very distinct things. Our vision enters into full

exercise from earliest infancy; observation is not acquired until

after much labour and many years.

Do not forget to add, that the five stamens are brought very closely

together by their elongated anthers, as is also seen in the flower of

the potato-plant. (Fig. 21, _a_.)

The same botanists who took our solanum for a plant with a

polypetalous corolla, considered the Bitter-sweet (_Solanum

dulcamara_) to be a metamorphosis of the Garden Nightshade! The

former they christened the red-berried solanum (_Solanum baccis

rubris_), and the latter, the black-berried solanum (_Solanum baccis

nigris_).

* * * * *

But if we once launch into the hypothetical, we shall be unable to

stop half-way. If the species of one and the same genus are the

result of a transformation, why may we not assert as much of the

genera of a family, or the families of an order?

Thus we should arrive, step by step, at an unique type, not

only for the vegetable kingdom, but for vegetables and animals,

including man himself, and realise, to some extent, the ideal of the

Greeks,--_unity in variety_.

Be it acknowledged, however, that _we_ have no desire to rise to

so lofty an elevation. The potato-plant--unknown to the ancients,

inasmuch as it is a native of the New World--has not been found to

lose its character since its introduction into the ancient continent;

its congener, the nightshade--an old native, like every bad

herb--accompanies it everywhere; but its fibrous roots are absolutely

virgin of every farinaceous tubercule.

Though the nightshade is common everywhere, Tournefort was the first

to describe it with complete accuracy. That great observer even

specifies various peculiarities which most of our botanists omit from

their descriptions. Thus, he rightly remarks, that the peduncles

branch out so as to form a kind of umbel, and do not emerge, as

is usually the case, from the axils of the leaves, but a little

below, from the very branches of the stem. He was also the first

to note--and it was a veritable discovery--that the white flowers

of the nightshade, grouped in threes to eights, are each formed

of a single cup-shaped leaf,--in other words, that the corolla is

monophyllous, and slightly bell-like or campanulated. Nor does he

forget to describe the disposition of the five stamens, set close

around the pistil, which, as it develops, forms a globular bacciform

fruit, embraced by a five-lobed calyx. This fruit, which changes in

colour from green to black, is filled with a great number of grains

in a thick liquid, exhaling a nauseous odour. As for the leaves, they

resemble those of spinach, for which, in some countries, they serve

as a substitute.

Like all plants found by the wayside, and among heaps of refuse,

the nightshade loves to vary its form, and of its various forms

some nomenclators have made as many different species. The typical

variety, the _Solanum nigrum_, has glabrous stems and leaves, that

is, they are covered with short, but hardly visible hairs; its

berries are black.

The smooth variety, or _Solanum villosum_, is rather rare, and has

swollen or bulging leaves and stems; its berries are red or of

a reddish yellow. The two varieties seem able, by sowing, to be

transformed into one another. A sub-variety of the _Solanum villosum_

has been described as a peculiar species, under the name of _Solanum

miniatum_, so named on account of its vermilion-coloured berries.

The _Solanum ochroleucum_ and _Solanum luteovirens_, the first

with yellowish, and the second with greenish berries, are simply

varieties, and the same may be said of the dwarf form, known by the

name of _Solanum humile_.

But the physician is more interested in the solanum than either the

gardener or botanist. For him it is no useless or noxious weed, but,

on the contrary, is an eminently precious herb. And, in fact, if it

possessed only one-half the virtues formerly attributed to it, we

ought to bow to the ground every time we encounter it.

Listen to our authorities even if you do not respect them.

Cæsalpin asserts that the decoction or juice of the nightshade is

a sovereign remedy for complaints of the stomach and the bladder,

and regards nightshade-water, mixed with an equal quantity of

absinthe-water, as one of the best sudorifics.

Tragus, a physician and botanist like Cæsalpin, recommends the juice

of the nightshade as anti-choleraic, as well as efficacious in

inflammation of the liver and stomach. And yet, at the same time, he

grows emphatic in reference to its poisonous properties. "Do not,"

he says, "employ this herb immoderately, lest it should happen to

you as, in 1541, I saw it happen to an inhabitant of Erbach, near

Hohenburg. After having eaten a few nightshade-berries, he was

seized, on the following day, by a furious monomania, which led

his neighbours to believe him possessed of a devil. After having

uselessly employed every kind of exorcism, they sent for me. I made

my patient swallow some very strong wine; he fell into a profound

slumber; and, when he awoke, was cured."[27]

Withering affirms that a couple of grains of the dried leaves will

act as a powerful sudorific, and that they have also been found

useful in some cutaneous disorders.

Here is another authority, before whom naturalists are accustomed

to give way. We make use of the _Solanum nigrum_, says

Tournefort,[28] when it is necessary to subdue inflammation,

or soften and relax the fibres. The pounded herb is applied

to hæmorrhoids. The juice, with a sixth-part of rectified

spirit-of-wine, is advantageous in cases of erysipelas, ringworm,

wildfire, and all diseases of the skin. Nightshade is also employed

in anodyne cataplasms.

* * * * *

Tournefort did not confine himself to simple botanical descriptions;

he did, what our modern botanists neglect doing,--he made

experiments, both physiological and chemical, on the plants employed

in medicine. Thus, he began by tasting the different parts of the

plant.

"The root," he says, "is almost insipid; the leaves taste like a

saltish herb; there is something sharp and vinegary in the fruit;

the whole plant has a narcotic odour. The _leaves_ do not redden

turnsole,[29] but the ripe _fruit_ reddens it greatly; whence we

may conjecture that the _sal-ammoniac_ contained in this plant is

moderated in the leaves by a very considerable portion of fœtid

oil and earth, but that the acid portion of the salt is strongly

developed in the ripe fruit; so that we must choose our part of the

plant according to the purposes we wish to employ it for. The fruits,

for instance, are more refreshing, but more repellant, than the

leaves, which soften while resolving, cleansing, and absorbing."

We admit that these data leave much to be desired from a chemical

point of view. We may well ask, for example, how the illustrious

philosopher ascertained the presence of sal-ammoniac in nightshade?

But it is not fair to criticise the science of the past, by judging

it through the deceitful prism of the science of to-day. We must

adopt the methods of our predecessors, when discussing natural

productions from all the view-points of their applications.

DOG'S-TOOTH GRASS.

In clearing an uncultivated field we uproot a great number of

herbaceous plants of different families; but those of the _Gramineæ_,

or Grasses, invariably predominate. They are the trailing roots,

or _rhizomes_, of certain species which have been included under

the general denomination of Dog's-tooth. These tenacious and

vigorous roots,--so wholesome in various maladies, so injurious

to cultivation,--are, whatever certain botanists may say, far

from tracing their origin in all cases to the _Triticum repens_

(couch-grass) and _Panicum dactylon_--those terrible enemies of the

corn-field, which, once established in the soil, are with difficulty

extirpated, and prove very injurious to the "golden crops."

Nearly every grass which puts forth _rhizomes_ will furnish the

_Dogs-tooth_. We may cite, for instance, several species of _Festuca_

(as _Festuca rubra_ and _Festuca pinnata_), or fescue grass; at least

two kinds of meadow grass (_Poa compressa_ and _Poa pratensis_), a

species of wild-oats (_Avena elatior_), to say nothing of the weeds

_Arundo phragmites_ and _Arundo epigeios_. The long _rhizomes_ of

these vivacious plants possess nearly the same properties, due to

their saccharine principles.

[Illustration: FIG. 22.--A Corn-field.]

How shall we distinguish these plants from one another? Their leaves

have almost exactly the same configuration; they are linear;[30]

and their flowers are not apparent,--they do not attract the gaze

of the passer-by. Yet they possess all the organs necessary for the

reproduction of their species:--three stamens, each composed of an

anther and a characteristic filament; on this anther, whose two

lobes are arranged like the branches of an X, the pistil softly and

tenderly balances itself on the summit of a frail thread, to which it

is attached by the back. Remark, too, the two styles with feathery

stigmata,[31] like the barbs of feathers. Nothing is wanting to

constitute a complete flower.

There is even a perianth, or calyx, represented by a couple of

tiny membraneous scales, scientifically known as _glumellulæ_;

then at the base of each spikelet, composed of one or two of these

bright green lilliputian flowers, are two other and larger scales,

called _glumellæ_: they represent an _involucre_.[32] It is almost

unnecessary to add, that the free, unilocular ovary, or seed vessel,

forms, as a result of its development, the seed, whose embryo adheres

laterally to a farinaceous kernel, or _perisperm_. The union of one

or more of these flowers composes a spikelet, and the union of the

_spikelets_ constitutes the spike, which may be disposed on a simple

or ramified axis. Such are, in general, the characters we must keep

before us in the difficult study of the Gramineæ.

Let us now see, more closely, the two plants which, according to the

botanists, furnish the root of the Dog's-tooth.

[Illustration: FIG. 23.--A River's Sandy Bank.]

When walking along the sandy bank of a river, you must frequently

have trodden under foot a low, almost crawling herb, remarkable for

its violet-red spikes, which, three to five in number, are arranged

like the fingers of a hand, on the summit of a short curving stem.

[Illustration: FIG. 24.--(P. 93.)]

This glaucous-leaved herb is the _Panicum dactylon_ (_i.e._,

fingered-millet) of Linnæus. The long trailing _rhizomes_, joined

to some less prominent characters, have been sufficient for some

botanists to create a special genus, _Cynodon_, or _Kynodon_ (a Greek

word, signifying literally "Dog's-tooth"), and to change the Linnean

denomination of our grass into _Cynodon dactylon_. It is seldom met

with in cultivated land; but in such a locality as we have already

described, and sometimes on open sandy shores, where the summer sea

comes with a gentle ripple and a subdued music, it may frequently

be found. Its long, tough runners creep through and over the loose

soil for many yards, rooting at every joint, and furnished with flat,

rather short leaves, of a glaucous hue. The flowers grow in narrow,

linear spikes, arranged at the top of a short leafy stem in the form

of an umbel, and give the grass, when in bloom, a very peculiar and

characteristic aspect.

But if the _Cynodon dactylon_ is rare in cultivated fields, the

_Triticum repens_--commonly called couch-grass, but, in our opinion,

the true and genuine dog's-tooth--is particularly abundant. (See Fig.

23.) Its long subterranean stems increase with astonishing rapidity,

and if the smallest fragment be left in the soil, it will vegetate,

and speedily extend itself, until it becomes almost impossible to

extirpate it. It is a kind of wild barley, with stiff leaves of a

moderate length, and of a bluish tint, and a double spike, composed

of clusters of four to six flowers, each crowned by a narrow ridge.

We must not confound the _Triticum repens_ with the _Elymus caninus_

of Linnæus, which has no trailing underground roots like the former.

It differs also from the latter in the roughness of _each_ side of

its leaves,--only one side of the leaf of the _Triticum repens_ being

rough,--and in the crests which rise above the flowers.

Was the dog's-tooth known to the ancients? Undoubtedly, for the

dog's-tooth flourishes in all climates,--is truly cosmopolitan. But

it is difficult to decide whether their _Agrostis_ and their _Gramen_

apply to the above-mentioned species.

* * * * *

According to Diodorus, the primitive Egyptians lived upon herbs.

"They also eat," he says,[33] "the stems and roots which grow in the

marshes. Especially did they hunt after the _Agrostis_, a plant

remarkable for its sweet savour and the sufficient nourishment

which it offers to the wants of man. It is likewise considered an

excellent provision for cattle, from its fattening properties. It is

in remembrance of these benefits that the inhabitants of Egypt, when

worshipping their gods, carry this plant in their hand."

The _Agrostis_ of Diodorus would apply to all the _Graminaceæ_ whose

stems and roots contain nutritive and saccharine principles. Let us

here remind the reader that the sugar-cane belongs to the same family

as barley and the dog's-tooth.

Pliny is much more explicit. What he says of the _Gramen_ (or

grass), the "commonest of herbs"--_inter herbas vulgatissimum_--and

of the geniculated spaces between its knots (_geniculatis serpit

internodiis_), applies with tolerable accuracy to our _Triticum

repens_. He also speaks of the diuretic properties of a decoction

from its trailing roots.[34] As for his _Gramen aculeatum_ (or

needle-like grass), it is positively our _Cynodon dactylon_. "The

five spurs or needles which shoot out," he says, "from the top of the

stem, have procured it the name of _Dactylon_." To these digitiform

spikes he attributes the property of checking the bleeding of the

nose, when they are introduced into the nostrils. But a thorn is much

better fitted to produce this effect; the spikes of the digitated

panicle of the _Cynodon dactylon_ are much too soft to determine

epistaxis by a mechanical action. So it is not improbable that they

owe their putative virtue to their colouring, which is not unlike

that of blood, and which has even procured for the species the

name of _Digitaria sanguinalis_. In the same manner the capricious

mediæval imagination pronounced liverwort, with its marbled leaves,

a sovereign remedy for diseases of the lungs,--organs remarkable for

their marbled appearance.

Dioscorides is quite as explicit as Pliny. What the latter names

_Gramen_, he, however, calls _Agrostis_. After having particularised

the nodosities of the stem--a feature common to nearly all the

Graminaceæ--he describes very clearly the long creeping roots put forth

by the said stem; and he does not forget to mention the sugary savour,

so characteristic of the rhizomes (ῥίζας γλυκείας) of the

_Triticum repens_.[35] Theophrastus confines himself to indicating the

_Agrostis_ as a herb which infests the fields.[36]

* * * * *

The _Cynodon dactylon_ is, at the present day, very common in Greece,

where it is specially partial to low grounds, which are somewhat damp

and sandy. The inhabitants call it _Agriada_, a name derived from

ἄγριος, "wild." But if we may believe Fraas, the author of a _Flora

Classica_, the genuine dog's-tooth, _Triticum repens_, is, on the

contrary, very rare in the land of Socrates. This is a curious fact,

if a fact, for geographical botany.

Throughout the Middle Ages, and down to the eighteenth century,

were confounded, under the generic name of _Gramina_, or grasses,

the most diversely-featured herbs, including the dog's-tooth.

Tabernæmontanus, Dodonné, Mathiole, Jean and Gaspard Bauhin, were

the first to attempt the clearing of a path through this intricate

wilderness. They eulogised, at the same time, the emollient

properties of the dog's-tooth.

Tournefort[37] and Bernard de Jussieu, who appear to have made a

chemical analysis of it, pretend that the roots of the dog's-tooth

contain a large quantity of oil, earth, and several acid liquids,

as well as a little fixed salt. "According to all appearance," they

add, "the roots act by means of a salt analogous to salt of coral,

enveloped in a great deal of sulphur."

Instead of mocking us with such fantastic analyses, which can only

excite the laughter of our modern chemists, Tournefort and Bernard

de Jussieu would have deserved better of science if they had applied

themselves to the task of introducing light and order into the cloudy

chaos of the _Graminaceæ_ of the botanists of their age.

* * * * *

But winter is passing away, and the time for the singing of birds is

at hand. Already the earth is awakening from her prolonged lethargy;

the hedgerows are green with budding leaves; the purple crocuses

shine in many a sheltered field; on bank and brae, in glen and vale,

the glory of the primrose makes glad the heart of man; the wood

anemone hangs its delicate head in the woodlands; and it seems as if

a gladder feeling animated the universal nature.

[Illustration: FIG. 25.--On bank and brae, in glen and vale.]

And the heart and the brain and the soul sympathise in this apparent

delight of material things; the heart beating more freely, the brain

feeling a stronger working power, and the soul rising to purer views

of life and its duties:--

"Oh, who can speak the joys of spring's young morn,

When wood and pasture open on his view,

When tender green buds blush upon the thorn,

And the first primrose dips its leaves in dew!"

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 12: Chaplin Child, "Beredici," p. 171.]

[Footnote 13: Pliny, "Historia Naturalis," Book xi.]

[Footnote 14: De Saussure, "Voyage dans les Alpes," Book iii., p. 45

(ed. 1803, Neufchâtel).]

[Footnote 15: Annales de Chimie et de Physique, vol. xxvii., p. 134.]

[Footnote 16: Philosophical Transactions, 1820, vol. ii., p. 165.]

[Footnote 17: It is but fair to add, however, that Vogt and others

contend for the animal origin of this substance, and regard the

_Protococcus nivalis_ as simply a development of the infusoria,

_Disceræa nivalis_.]

[Footnote 18: Macmillan, "Footnotes from the Page of Nature," pp.

141-143.]

[Footnote 19: The two temperate zones together represent perceptibly

the half, or 0.520, and the torrid zone, two-fifths, or, more

exactly, 0.398, of the terrestrial surface.]

[Footnote 20: That is, muttering, marmot-wise, one's prayers.]

[Footnote 21: Byron.]

[Footnote 22: Also called the Golden-crested Wren.]

[Footnote 23: C. Vogt, Agassiz, und seiner Freunde geologische

Alpenreisen, p. 181. Frankfort, 1847.]

[Footnote 24: A flower with a stalk is called _pedunculate_ or

_pedicellate_; without a stalk, it is _sessile_.]

[Footnote 25: Pliny, "Historia Naturalis," xxv. 18.]

[Footnote 26: Dioscorides, "Materia Medica," iv. 191.]

[Footnote 27: Tragus, "Historia Stirpium" (ed. 1552).]

[Footnote 28: Tournefort, "Histoire des Plantes" (ed. 1727), i. 74,

75.]

[Footnote 29: _Turnsole_, a colouring substance made of coarse linen

rags, which, after being cleaned and bleached, are dipped into a

mixture of ammoniacal matter, and the juice of the _Crozophora

tinctoria_.]

[Footnote 30: Leaves are said to be _linear_, when the veins do not

spread out, but run from the base to the extreme point.]

[Footnote 31: A _stigma_ is the continuation of the cellular tissue

of the style, and has sometimes projecting cellules of hairs.]

[Footnote 32: A whorl, or ring, of _bracts_ (floral leaves) is so

called.]

[Footnote 33: Diodorus, i. 43.]

[Footnote 34: Pliny, "Historia Naturalis," xxiv. 188.]

[Footnote 35: Dioscorides, iv. 30.]

[Footnote 36: Theophrastus, "Historia Plantarum," i. 10; xi. 2, 4.]

[Footnote 37: Tournefort, "Histoire des Plantes," ii. 54.]

BOOK II.

SPRING-TIME.

Now that the Winter's gone, the earth hath lost

Her snow-white robes, and now no more the frost

Candies the grass, or calls an icy cream

Upon the silver lake or crystal stream;

But the warm sun thaws the benumbèd earth,

And makes it tender; gives a sacred birth

To the glad swallow; wakes in hollow tree

The drowsy cuckoo, and the humble bee;

Now do a choir of chirping minstrels bring

In triumph to the world the youthful Spring;

And valleys, hills, and woods, in rich array,

Welcome the coming of the longed-for May.

--THOMAS CAREW.

'Tis silence all,

And pleasing expectation.

Even mountains, vales,

And forests, seem impatient to demand

The promised sweetness. Man superior walks

Amid the glad creation, musing praise,

And looking lively gratitude.

--THOMSON.

[Illustration]

CHAPTER I.

_WHAT MAY BE SEEN IN THE HEAVENS._

"Blue the sky,

Spreads like an ocean hung on high."

--BYRON.

[Illustration]

It may be doubted whether many of the patrons of Mudie's are

acquainted with the works of a philosopher, who, in his day, enjoyed

no little fame--I mean, Robert Boyle (1627-1691),--and yet there are

passages in them well worth attentive perusal, from the lucidity

of their style and the soundness of their reflections. He has, for

instance, some observations in his "Considerations on the Usefulness

of Experimental Philosophy," which are germane to the general purport

and tone of our little book. He remarks, that the contemplation of

the vastness, beauty, and regular motions of the heavenly bodies,

the excellent structure of animals and plants, besides a multitude

of other phenomena of nature, and the subserviency of most of these

to man, ought, certainly, to induce him, as a rational creature, to

conclude that this vast, beautiful, orderly, and, in a word, many

ways admirable, system of things, that we call the world, was framed

by an Author supremely powerful, wise, and good.

The works of God, he adds, are so worthy of their Author, that,

besides the impresses of His wisdom and goodness that are left, as

it were, upon their surfaces, there are a great many more curious

and excellent tokens and effects of Divine artifice in the hidden

and innermost recesses of them; and these are not to be discovered

by the perfunctory looks of oscitant and unskilful beholders; but

require, as well as deserve, the most attentive and prying inspection

of inquisitive and well-instructed considerers. It is not by a slight

survey, but by a diligent and skilful scrutiny of the works of God,

that a man must be, by a rational and affective conviction, engaged

to acknowledge, with the prophet, that the Author of nature is

"wonderful in counsel, and excellent in working."

That He is wonderful in counsel and excellent in working must be the

conclusion of every devout student of the celestial phenomena; and

to those we shall, therefore, devote the first portion of our Spring

meditations.

* * * * *

What reception would formerly have been given to any poet who had

dared to exclaim--

"The bright face of the heavens contemplate,

And then, as in a mirror, you shall see,

Outlined, the figure of the rounded earth"?

Would he not have been met with the reproach which Horace, in his

_Ars Poetica_, so epigrammatically formulates?--

"Pictoribus atque poetis

Quidlibet audendi semper fuit æqua potestas."

An equal licence ever was accorded

To poet as to painter, that he might

The boldest sweeps of fancy still essay!

As for men of science, they would not have condescended to honour

even with a smile such strange and fantastic words.

Let us suppose, now, that our poetical astronomer, thus contemned,

had addressed his scientific censors in some such language as the

following:--

Do not think, illustrious sirs, that it is by a purely poetical

licence I call the firmament a mirror in which the earth may be seen

reflected. Only, to prevent all equivoque, we must understand one

another. The mirror to which I am alluding does not reflect _light_,

but _movement_. It is in a particular movement of the stars that the

true figure of our planet is reflected, is revealed to us. But before

the human mind can appreciate this movement,--especially before it

can discover the cause,--we must be prepared to devote ourselves to

centuries of assiduous effort. In this long interval, philosophers of

every class will allow unrestricted scope to their imagination.

Shall we, then, recall some of these opinions,--some of these truly

poetical licences?

Homer and Hesiod represented the earth as a disc, or as a flat

rondel, surrounded on all sides by a winding river which they called

the Ocean, and which, in the extreme East, communicated with the

Phasis, in Colchis. Above this terrestrial disc the outspread sky was

arched like a vast dome; a dome supported by two massive pillars,

resting on the shoulders of the god Atlas.

Surely the ancient poets must have evolved the earth-disc from their

own prolific imagination. Can they never have seen a far-off vessel,

showing, as it approached them, at first the tops of its masts, then

its swelling sails, and finally its hull? They might have made so

simple an observation in any seaport; if they did, why did it not

suggest to them the idea that the earth, instead of being level, must

be round? Because it is easier to let the imagination speak than the

reason.

The fiction of the earth-disc remained long unshaken, with the

exception of a few modifications. Thales figured to himself the earth

as floating on a humid element. And, six centuries later, we find

Seneca still adopting the opinion of the Greek philosopher. "This

humid element (_humor_)," he says, "which sustains the disc of the

earth like a ship, may be, perhaps, the ocean, or a liquid of simpler

nature than water."[38]

But how, then, was the rising or setting of the stars explained?

The ancients supposed that they were extinguished at sunset, and

rekindled at sunrise. Thus, an unfounded hypothesis has for its

consequence a still more baseless hypothesis; and in this manner we

glide down the slope of fiction to fall eventually into an abyss of

contradictions. Such is the true punishment of error.

Let us continue.--According to the Chaldeans, who were thought to

be profoundly versed in astronomy, the earth was hollow, and shaped

like an egg-shell. And,--adds Diodorus, from whom we have this

detail,--they adduce numerous and plausible proofs of this assertion.

Yet was this idea in direct opposition to the evidence of our senses

when we travel over a wide plain, or navigate the great deep; at

least, unless we admit that the earth has the form of a reversed

egg-shell, with its convex face uppermost, and its concave one

beneath. Heraclitus of Ephesus introduced the Chaldean doctrine into

Greece.

Anaximander represents the earth as a cylinder, whose upper face

alone is inhabited. This cylinder, adds the philosopher, is a

third of its diameter in height, and floats freely in the midst

of the celestial vault, because there is no reason why it should

move more to one side than the other. Leucippus, Democritus,

Heraclitus, and Anaxagoras,--names of high repute in the history of

philosophy,--adopted Anaximander's system, though it was neither more

nor less than a wild phantasy.

Anaximenes and Zenophanes, without pronouncing dogmatically on

the form of the earth, represented it as resting,--the one upon

compressed air, the other upon roots which were prolonged _ad

infinitum_. But upon what was the compressed air supported? And of

what nature were these mysterious roots?

Plato, with a nearer approximation to the probable, gave to the earth

the form of a cube. The cube, bounded by six square equal surfaces,

appeared to him the most perfect geometrical solid, and consequently

the most suitable for the earth, supposed to be the centre of the

universe.

Eudoxes, who, in his long travels in Greece and Egypt, must have seen

new constellations rising in the south, while others disappeared

in the north, never ventured to adduce from his astronomical

observations the sphericity of the earth.

Aristotle, bolder than Eudoxes, was led to the conception of this

sphericity by simple consideration of mechanics. The earth, he

said, must be a sphere, because each particle of matter is carried,

by gravity, towards the centre; and as this fact is general, the

superficial particles must be at an equal distance from the centre.

This theoretical view was adopted by Archimedes, who applied it to

the waters covering the terrestrial surface. Aristotle went further;

he saw the rotundity of the earth in the shadow thrown by the latter

on the bright face of the moon during its eclipses.

It is a noteworthy fact that the arguments of Aristotle, founded

on a method to which all the progress of science is due, remained

unaccepted for two thousand years. And why?

We shall attempt to explain.

Among those subjects whose comprehension seems to have been specially

difficult to the mind of man, we must include the fact that the

earth floats without any solid support in the infinity of space, and

carries its denizens on its surface, both above and below.

Our creeds, which have ever pretended to explain everything in the

physical as well as in the moral order, have here endeavoured to

come to the assistance of the weakness of the human mind. And as each

creed asserts itself to be the best, to the exclusion of every other,

men began to imagine for the earth a navel, and placed it where it

was supposed pleasing to the divinity.

The Greek priests dismissed a couple of eagles, one towards the west,

the other towards the east; the place where these favourite birds

of Jove, of the "Father of gods and men," encountered each other,

was to be considered the "navel" of the earth. It chanced to be

Delphos, whose oracle was the most esteemed in the ancient world; the

sacerdotal caste accumulated there immense wealth. The Greek priests

prudently refrained from dealing with the difficult problem of the

earth's solid support.

* * * * *

The Hebrew pontiffs, however, were not so reserved. After having made

Jerusalem the "navel of the world," they allowed for the earth itself

seven solid columns as a foundation. The question of the Antipodes,

in which the greatest intellects of antiquity believed,--Pythagoras,

Plato, and Aristotle,--was thus pontifically judged and condemned.

And Christians who preferred to follow the Judaical observance of

external ceremonies to a true comprehension of the spirit of the

Gospels, exaggerated the application of this sentence.

* * * * *

The dogmatic condemnation of the existence of the Antipodes long

arrested man in his search for that fourth quarter of the world

whose inhabitants should have their feet directed towards ours. It

was one of the principal obstacles which Columbus was called upon

to surmount in the realisation of his sublime idea. When cited

before the Council of Salamanca,--composed of prelates and men

of science,--he had to meet the revived objection of Lactantius,

a Christian apologist of the third century:[39]--"Can there be

anything more absurd than a belief in the existence of Antipodes,

of inhabitants with their feet opposite to our feet, of people who

walk with their feet in the air, and their heads on the ground?--that

there is a part of the world where everything is inverted, where

trees throw out their branches from top to bottom, while it rains,

and hails, and snows, from bottom to top?"

Columbus admirably demonstrated, from an artificial globe, that

flies walked as easily on the lower as on the upper surface, and

hence pointed out that men, compared with the size of the earth,

are much smaller still than flies. But his judges persisted in

their conviction, and did not fail to cast in his face the jesting

words of Plutarch: "Philosophers, rather than renounce a favourite

hypothesis, would make human beings crawl on the lower face of the

earth like worms or lizards." But it was principally the authority of

St Augustine which they invoked to condemn a belief in the Antipodes.

St Augustine had declared such a belief incompatible with the dogmas

of the faith; for to admit the existence of inhabitable lands, in the

opposite hemisphere, would be to admit the existence of peoples not

descended from Adam, since it would have been impossible for him to

traverse the ocean lying between Asia and the Antipodes!

* * * * *

Some authorities denied the Antipodes on the ground taken by certain

classic writers, that the regions of the opposite hemisphere were

uninhabitable under the tropics, on account of the extreme heat,

and near the Poles, on account of the extreme cold. Others cited

Epicurus, affirming that the earth was inhabitable and roofed with

a celestial vault only in our western hemisphere, the other half

being an inaccessible chaos. Others pretended that no traveller

could reach the east by way of the west, because the earth, being

pear-shaped, he would encounter on his road an insurmountable

tuberosity,--undoubtedly the tail or stalk of the pear! Finally,

there were some who dwelt upon the magnitude of the earth, whose

circuit would occupy a voyage of upwards of three years.

It was to this objection, as the most serious, that Columbus

principally addressed his reply. And he replied by discovering the

New World. But had not this daring genius been supported in his

projects by the Spanish sovereigns, Ferdinand and Isabella, he would

have been handed over to the Inquisition, and condemned as a heretic.

It was then so dangerous to believe in the Antipodes, that a Bishop

of Salzburg was deposed from his episcopal throne, and deprived

of his ecclesiastical dignity, by the Pope Zacharias, for having

countenanced the heresy.

We now know why, for a whole series of centuries, men would not

follow in the footsteps of Aristotle, who was the first to establish

theoretically the sphericity of the earth.

The discovery of the New World, and the voyages of circumnavigation

which rapidly succeeded one another, demonstrated, not only that

inhabitants there are whose feet are opposite to ours, but that the

earth does not rest upon any species of support; that it floats, like

a star, freely in space.

The ice was broken. The question of the earth's figure was revived,

and, this time, discussed in a new light.

_Is the earth perfectly round?_

Copernicus never doubted it; he who was the first, after Pythagoras,

to represent our planet as revolving round the sun. The geometrical

sphericity of the earth wonderfully harmonised with the perfect

circles in which he supposed the planets to move. Kepler, who had

first laid a sacrilegious hand on the holy figure of the circle,

and on the circular orbits of the stars, never ventured, however,

to dispute the perfect rotundity of the earth; it appeared to him

a matter beyond all controversy. Galileo was the first to hazard a

doubt. But this doubt became a certainty only through the labours of

Huygens.

* * * * *

Galileo, who died in the very year that Newton was born (1642),

had discovered, as we know, that all bodies, in falling, obey an

uniformly accelerative force, called _gravitation_, and that the

space traversed increases as the square of the time occupied in

their descent. Huygens perceived that gravity varies according to the

parallels of latitude, and it was not long before he demonstrated,

by the number of oscillations which a pendulum of a certain length

performs in a certain time, that it diminishes in a regular ratio as

we approach the Equator, where it reaches its _minimum_, and that

it augments, on the contrary, in due proportion as we approach the

Poles, where it must attain its _maximum_. Strong in this knowledge,

and knowing, moreover, that the material molecules, uniformly

distributed in the volume of a sphere, act upon a point of its

surface as if they were all reunited in the centre of that sphere,

Huygens deduced from it the inequality of the equatorial and the

polar radius; he attempted even to determine how much the former

exceeded the latter. We know, now-a-days, that this difference is

139,670 feet (41,848,380-41,708,710 feet).

Newton admits, with Huygens, that the earth bulges out at the Equator

and is flattened at the Poles; that, in a word, it is a spheroid

of revolution. He went much farther: he made the precession of

the Equinoxes depend upon this flattening; but he did not furnish

its mathematical demonstration. What has been the result? A free

skirmishing ground for all opinions.

[Illustration: FIG. 26.--Sir Isaac Newton.]

While Newton maintained that the form of the earth was that of a

spheroid flattened at the poles, as a necessary sequence of the great

natural law which bears his name, Jacques Cassini declared himself

in favour of an elongated spheroid. The difference between these

two illustrious teachers originated a controversy which lasted for

upwards of fifty years. The Academy of Sciences of Paris pronounced,

not unnaturally, in favour of the opinion of their colleague, though

it was far from having the authority of Dominique Cassini, father

of Jacques, and, still less, that of the illustrious President of

the Royal Society of London. But patriotic ardour supplemented the

weakness of their arguments. The flattened spheroid and Newton's law

were rejected by France, because they were an English invention.

Undoubtedly, no one _openly_ acknowledged so paltry a reason, but

it was certainly true as a sentiment. As everybody knows, it was

Voltaire who first removed the prohibition, and popularised the

Newtonian philosophy in France.

How did our astronomers finally succeed in demonstrating

mathematically the veritable form of our planet?

To obtain a clear and accurate conception, we are obliged to

transport ourselves back two thousand years. Let us recall, in the

first place, that, owing to the diurnal movement, all the stars

progress from east to west; that they rise and set, to recommence

the same rotation. This is a general and conspicuous fact, which

everybody can confirm for himself. But now for another, whose

observation requires a little more time and patience. During the

diurnal movement, which carries on all the stars and the sun himself,

the latter progresses independently, in the inverse direction of

the celestial vault, as a fly might do upon a revolving globe. But

this second fact is complicated with a third: While advancing on his

own account, from west to east, the circle which the sun traverses

is not parallel to the Equator; the radiant luminary transports

himself alternatively into the northern and southern hemispheres,

accomplishing this rotation in 365 days and a fraction of a day, in

an oblique plane, which cuts that of the Equator under an angle of

about 23-1/2°.

* * * * *

Let us here take advantage of a parenthesis to explain a few

astronomical technicalities, necessary for the due comprehension of

our subject.

It is in the plane, or _oblique circle_,--ὁ κῦκλος λοξός, as

Ptolemæus called it,--that eclipses occur, owing to the relative

positions of the sun, earth, and moon; and it is for this reason

modern astronomers have denominated it the _Ecliptic_. The Ecliptic

is the Equator of the _oblique sphere_ (σφαῖρα

ἐγκεκλιμμένη), properly so called, as the Equator is that of

the sphere of the world, or the _right sphere_ (σφαῖρα ὀρθή).

The circles parallel to the Ecliptic, which continue to diminish in

diameter up to the poles of the oblique sphere, bear the name of

_parallels of latitude_; and we give that of _meridians of longitude_

or _oblique ascensions_ (ἀναφοραὶ λοξαί) to the great

circles which cut the first rectangularly as they all pass through

the axis and the poles of the Ecliptic. The same division by circles

cutting each other rectangularly has been made on the right sphere,

or sphere of the world. Only, _there_ the latitudes are named

_declinations_, and the longitudes _right ascensions_. The general

diurnal movement is a movement in right ascension; it is measured upon

the Equator. The individual annual movement of the sun is a movement in

longitude; it is measured upon the Ecliptic.

The zone, or belt, which the sun seems to trace in its annual march,

from the limit of its southern excursion (_the winter solstice_) to

the limit of its boreal excursion (_the summer solstice_), and in

returning from that limit to the other, after having twice passed

through the equinoctial line (or Equator),--this zone is marked on

the firmament by a belt of constellations known as the _Zodiac_.

These constellations are named, according to the figurative grouping

of the stars (on which we have commented in Book I.),--the Ram, the

Bull, the Twins, the Crab, the Lion, the Virgin, the Balance, the

Scorpion, the Archer, the Cow, the Water-bearer, the Fishes. There

are twelve, three for each season. The constellations represented by

these figures, so singularly chosen, spread over the whole celestial

vault,--that is, over an extent of 360°.

* * * * *

To resume.

The heavens, like earth, have their annals: everything changes

there as in the human world. In the age of Hipparchus,--or some two

thousand years ago,--the sun entered, at the spring equinox, into the

zodiacal sign of Aries; in the summer solstice, it entered into that

of Cancer; at the autumnal equinox, into Libra; and at the winter

solstice, into Capricorn. These signs then corresponded exactly to

the constellations which they represent.

Now, whatever Aristotle and his disciples may say, the firmament

is not incorruptible (ἀφθαρτός) and immovable; even the _fixed_

stars, as we call them, change their place in time. We have seen

that the whole celestial vault or "right sphere" runs, from east to

west, around the poles of the world; we have seen also that the sun

moves, on his own account, from west to east, around the poles of

the oblique sphere, or the Ecliptic. Well, this does not suffice;

there is a third movement to be observed,--that of the right sphere

itself round the poles of the Ecliptic; and this, not like that of

the sun, from west to east, but inversely, from east to west. Only,

this movement of the starry sphere in longitude, or parallel to the

plane of the Ecliptic, is extremely slow, compared with the movement

of the same sphere in right ascension, or parallel to the Equator of

the world. While the former traverses in twenty-four hours the 360°

of the circle, the latter occupies (in round numbers) 25,000 years.

Who was the first discoverer of the slow movement of the heavens?

Hipparchus. This great astronomer, on comparing his own observations

with the more ancient ones of Aristillus and Timocharis, succeeded

in ascertaining that the constellation which, 150 years before him,

corresponded to the spring equinox, did not, in _his_ time, any

longer coincide exactly with the same equinoctial point, but had

outstripped or preceded it about 2°. This is what we mean by the

_precession of the equinoxes_.

Hipparchus was at first of opinion that this movement affected only

the constellations of the Zodiac; but he soon became assured of its

universality. He perceived that if it does not alter the parallels

of latitude; because it has occurred parallel with the Ecliptic, it

makes the position of the equinox retrograde from east to west, and

the sun pass slowly through the same constellations in the reverse of

the order in which he annually traverses them.

We know this movement now to nearly the fraction of a second. By an

inappreciable _daily_ quantity, it rises, at the end of the year, to

50".3,--in a century, to about 1-1/2°,--in twenty centuries, to 30°,

or the twelfth part of the Zodiac. It is for this reason the Ram,

which, in the days of Hipparchus, was occupied by the sun in spring,

has no longer any value as a commemorative sign; it gives place

now-a-days to the constellation of the Fishes, and corresponds to the

constellation of Taurus, or the Bull; the constellation of Taurus to

Gemini, or the Twins; the constellation of the Twins to Cancer, and

so on. But little more than a month, then (a month of 2000 years!),

of the _great year_ (a year of 25,000 years!) has elapsed since the

epoch of Hipparchus. It is to astronomy especially that, with a

slight variation, we may apply the aphorism of Hippocrates--"_Brevis

vita, ars longa_" (Life is short, and art long).

* * * * *

The precession of the equinoxes explains why the pole of our starry

vault does not occupy invariably the same point of the firmament, and

why the constellations which we now see shining during the nights of

a given season change their places as time glides by.

* * * * *

But what is the cause of this movement?

Before this question, as before a sovereign tribunal, appear the two

opposite doctrines which have been enunciated on the value of the

earth and the sun in the world's system. According to the doctrine at

once the oldest and most intolerant, the earth occupies immovably the

centre of the world; the sun and the planets are only its satellites;

they, like the moon, revolve around the earth; finally, all the

starry sphere, the whole celestial vault, rotates upon its own axis

in four-and-twenty hours. We have been speaking as if this were

really and truly the condition of things. If we admit this doctrine,

which bears the name of the Ptolemean system,--though, in truth, it

is probably as old as humanity itself,--how shall we explain the

precession of the equinoxes? We cannot do otherwise than suppose,

that while the celestial sphere executes its diurnal movement round

the poles of the world, it executes another and much slower movement

round the poles of the Ecliptic.

But this assuredly is a most singular supposition. What! the same

starry sphere revolves at one and the same time parallel to the plane

of the Equator, and parallel to another plane (the Ecliptic) inclined

upon the first? After having imagined eight spheres of crystal to

explain the movements of the moon, the sun, the planets (Mercury,

Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn), and the stars, do we require a ninth?

Where will you stop, if you begin to discover additional movements?

You are condemned to wander from hypothesis to hypothesis, until you

fall into an abyss of contradictions!

* * * * *

Such is the language employed by the tribunal of posterity, in

addressing itself to the error which would substitute appearance for

reality.

* * * * *

According to the other theory, it is the _sun_ which occupies the

centre of the system, and it is the _earth_ which, accompanied by

the remainder of the planets, revolves around _it_. This theory is

likewise of considerable antiquity, though generally known as the

_Copernican system_. But four-and-twenty centuries prior to the

epoch of Nicholas Copernicus, it was taught by the "Samian sage,"

Pythagoras, and his disciples. The system then in acceptance,

however, imposed upon them the necessity of silence. Ptolemæus was

acquainted with it, but endeavoured to turn it into ridicule. "There

are people," he says, "who pretend that heaven is immovable, and

that it is earth which revolves on its own axis; evidently these

individuals are unaware how supremely absurd is their opinion (πάνμ

γελοιότατον)." And it was in the name of logic and mathematics

that Ptolemæus thus treated the Pythagoreans!

In the system of Copernicus,--the diurnal movement of the right

sphere,--it is the earth's rotation upon its own axis which, being

prolonged into the heavens, marks there, by its extremities, what

are called the _Poles of the world_, just as the _Equator of the

world_ is simply the prolongation of the terrestrial Equator. As for

the Equator of the oblique sphere (the Ecliptic), in which the sun

_apparently_ moves, it is, in reality, the identical plane in which

the earth moves during its annual revolution round the sun. Now, in

this movement of translation, the axis of the earth does not remain

constantly parallel to itself; it deviates,--very slightly, it is

true,--and so as to be scarcely perceptible to several generations

of men. It is then quite natural that our successors should see, for

a long time to come, the northern pole of the starry sphere near the

extremity of the tail of Ursa Minor. But, two thousand years hence,

this slow deviation will have become very perceptible; astronomers

will then see the pole of the world in another constellation, and, as

this displacement is continuous, the prolonged axis of the earth will

have traced on the firmament, in 25,000 to 26,000 years, a circle

parallel to the plane of the Ecliptic, and having for its centre the

pole of that plane. This circle is the base of a cone whose summit

rests upon the earth. (Fig. 27, _a_.)

[Illustration: FIG. 27.]

But this imaginary defined circle (which appears elliptic on account

of the perspective) is but the mean of a series of oscillations

around the pole of the world, which changes its position, as we

have just shown. (Fig. 27, _b_.) These oscillations originate in

the circumstance that the axis of the earth inclines alternately

forward and backward, in such wise, that a star, after having

approached the Pole, immediately afterwards recedes from it; they

cause the terrestrial globe to resemble the head of a man who, by an

alternation of gesture, says alternately yes and no. Only, while man

(the puppet!) occupies but a second or two in affirming and denying

the same thing, the earth employs about eighteen years and a half in

inclining once forward to say _yes_ (in Latin, _adnuere_), and once

backward to say _no_ (in Latin, _abnuere_). This is scientifically

denominated the _nutation_ of the earth.

* * * * *

Who was the fortunate mortal to discover a phenomenon so singular?

Bradley, the English astronomer; the same who discovered the

_aberration of light_. It was in the course of his researches to

determine the annual parallax or distance of the stars that, at an

interval of nineteen years, he made, in 1728, the discovery of the

aberration of light, and, in 1747, that of nutation.

The reader may not be displeased to know under what circumstances

he accomplished the latter discovery. While observing, for several

successive years, the circumpolar stars, and notably the star γ in

Draco,--a constellation situated between Ursa Major and Ursa Minor

(see Fig. 2, p. 9),--Bradley noticed that this star changed its

position by a movement constantly directed towards the north, from

1727 to 1736, or for a period of nine years. When it had reached the

latter limit, the star appeared stationary for a moment, and then

retraced its course in a southerly direction. Would it also occupy

a period of nine years to arrive at the limit of this contrary

excursion? Bradley affirmed that it would, and communicated his

prediction to a French astronomer, Le Monnier.

How was Bradley led to appear in the new character of a seer?

By two special circumstances--the universality, and the duration of

the phenomenon.

If the star γ in Draco had been the only one to direct its course

towards the north, Bradley would probably have been led to believe

that the Pole exercised upon it a peculiar attraction; but he

perceived that many other stars rose in like manner towards the

Pole with an uniform and constant march; it was, therefore, more

natural to suppose that the Pole advanced towards _them_. And what

strengthened the probability of this hypothesis was, that the stars

situated in the neighbourhood of the _course_ of the solstices

exhibited a corresponding displacement. But there was already

recognised as in existence a peculiar movement which explained the

precession of the equinoxes. Was it necessary, therefore, to suppose

a second, a kind of rotatory movement? Newton had already thought of

it, by imagining a nutation, through which the Pole might alternately

rise and sink on the plane of the Ecliptic in the space of a year.

But the displacement which occurs in that interval is too slight

to be perceptible to observation. There might, therefore, be a

reasonable doubt of the accuracy of Newton's idea.

Bradley resumed the idea of his illustrious compatriot. He recognised

in the northward movement of the stars the effect of a similar

rotation, but one which took much longer in its accomplishment. By

doubling the interval of nine years, to the term of which he had

seen the movement become stationary, he obtained a period nearly

approaching that which the moon employs in returning to the same

nodes. This coincidence flashed upon him like a ray of light.

* * * * *

We must here remind the reader,--who, we hope, is not weary of

our scientific or semi-scientific disquisition,--that the lunar

nodes,--_i.e._, the points of the Ecliptic through which the moon

passes when it proceeds from south to north (the ascending node),

and from north to south (the descending node),--are the analogues

of the solar equinoxes; the equatorial points through which the sun

passes on its course from south to north (the spring equinox), and

in returning from north to south (the autumn equinox),--points of

intersection whose retrogradation constitutes, as we have seen, the

precession of the equinoxes. Well, the moon's nodes retrograde in a

similar manner by a movement directed from east to west; only it is

a much slower movement. While the equinoxes are displaced but fifty

seconds (50") in a year, the lunar nodes, during the same period, and

in the same direction, move over a space of 19° 20' 29"; so that, in

less than nineteen years, they have made the complete circuit of the

heavens, to return to exactly the same point, after traversing 360°.

* * * * *

Thus, then, we have explained the data on which Bradley rested his

prediction. It was confirmed by Le Monnier, who observed, in fact,

that the star γ in Draco, and the neighbouring stars, observed by

Bradley from 1727 to 1736, moving from south to north, occupied

the same period of time, from 1736 to 1745, in accomplishing an

equal excursion in a contrary direction, from north to south. These

observations enabled him to fix approximatively the quantity of the

nutation.

To sum up; it was recognised that the angle made by the axis of the

terrestrial poles with the axis of the poles of the Ecliptic, far

from remaining constantly equal to itself (the amount was 23° 27' 30"

in the middle of the present century), varies by 0".48 yearly, and

that this angle itself experiences a variation whose mean value is

48" in a century. It sometimes exceeds this mean value, and sometimes

falls below it, by an amount which rises to nearly 9".65. Thus, while

describing, in an interval of 25,000 to 26,000 years, its curve

around the poles of the Ecliptic, the earth's axis describes, from

east to west, a small ellipsis in the space of about eighteen and

two-third years, and imperceptibly changes, moreover, its angle of

inclination.

But, in fine, what is the true cause of all these movements?

Were the earth a perfect sphere, were all its radii of equal length,

the effect of the universal _ponderation_ would make itself felt

as if all the material molecules were concentrated at a single

point--the centre; and, apart from this ponderation, which exercises

itself in the direct ratio of the masses, and in the inverse ratio

of the square of the distances, nothing exists which would sway

our globe in one direction rather than in another,--no precession

of the equinoxes would take place, the plane of the Ecliptic would

invariably coincide with the plane of the Equator, and an eternal

spring would smile on the fortunate earth. The dream of the poet

would be realised, and light would spread

"Through all the seasons of the golden year."

But, as observation shows, the contrary has taken place, since,

besides its movements of diurnal rotation and annual revolution,

the earth has its mobile axis, which is independently inclined and

displaced. Thus, the material molecules of the planetary surface are

not all at an equal distance from the centre; and, consequently, the

earth is not a perfect sphere. It is, as D'Alembert has demonstrated,

the bulging, equatorial portion which experiences, owing to the solar

attraction, a retrograde movement, carrying onward the rest of the

globe in a general march, called the precession of the equinoxes.

But this general movement, as we have seen, is, in itself, simply the

mean of a series of oscillations, which D'Alembert has also connected

with gravitation. He has shown that the nutation of the earth's axis

results from the moon's attraction on the bulging portion of our

globe. Finally, it has been mathematically demonstrated that the said

bulging portion of the earth produces, under the continuous action

of the sun, the precession of the equinoxes; just as this portion

determines, by its continuous action, the nutation of the lunar axis.

As in this universal ponderation all the wheelwork of the world

catches (_tous les rouages du monde s'engrènent_), and the planets,

such as Mars and Venus, must also have their share in the action,

however weak it may be, we have contrived to render an exact account

of the slow changes of the obliquity of the Ecliptic.

Let us resume. Movement and matter, all is _ponderated_.

Inasmuch as matter is unequally distributed around the earth's

centre, being flattened at the Poles and bulging at the Equator, it

follows that the sun's enormous weight makes it vacillate, so that

it describes at its axis a cone around the poles of the plane of its

orbit. Its movement we see in the heavens in the precession of the

equinoxes. But the terrestrial axis traces it tremblingly, because

the moon, owing to its vicinity, exercises a perturbing action on

our planet, which, in its turn, exercises on the moon a still more

energetic influence.

[Illustration]

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 38: Seneca, "Quæstiones Naturales," vi. 6.]

[Footnote 39: Lactantius, "De Falsa Sapientia," iii. 24.]

[Illustration]

CHAPTER II.

_WHAT MAY BE SEEN UPON THE EARTH._

"There lives and works

A soul in all things, and that soul is God."

--COWPER.

[Illustration]

We have returned, at least in an astronomical sense, to the budding,

happy, radiant spring; the sun, in its apparent course, crosses the

equinoctial line; the duration of the day, transiently equal to

that of the night, will augment in proportion as the great luminary

describes above our horizon greater and yet greater arcs of a circle.

Yet this is not the budding, happy, radiant spring of the poets. No,

if it be spring according to the law of universal gravitation, it is

winter still by the law of life. The forest trees, such as the oak,

the ash, the fir, and the beech, continue to present the image of

death; and the sap which should reanimate them has not awakened from

its winter sleep.

A solemn moment is it when the sap--that life-blood of the

plant--arrested by the icy grasp of winter in its circulatory

movement--receives a new impulse through the vivifying action of

the central luminary of our system. What a subject for study and

reflection!

[Illustration: FIG. 28.--Landscape in Winter.]

It has been very finely dealt with by Longfellow.

How wonderful! he exclaims,--and we only regard the wonder with

indifference, because it is repeated annually,--how wonderful is

the advent of spring!--the great annual miracle, as he calls it, of

the blossoming of Aaron's rod, repeated on myriads and myriads of

branches!--the gentle progression and growth of herbs, flowers,

trees,--gentle, and yet irrepressible,--which no force can stay, no

violence restrain,--like the influence of love, which wins its way,

and cannot be withstood by any human power, because itself is divine

power. True enough it is, that if spring came but once in a century,

or burst forth with the terror of an earthquake, and not in silence,

what wonder and expectation there would be in all hearts to behold

the miraculous change! But now the silent succession suggests nothing

but necessity. To most men, only the _cessation_ of the miracle would

be miraculous, and the perpetual exercise of God's power seems less

wonderful than its withdrawal would be.

* * * * *

May we venture on another quotation? We take it, gentle reader, from

a living poet, whose works are not so widely read as their genuine

poetical feeling and wealth of language deserve--I mean Sydney Dobell.

After describing the return of Spring, and her grief and astonishment

at the spectacle of earth, pale, frozen, seemingly dead, he

continues,--

"She fell upon

The corse, and warmed it. The natural earth,

Which was not _dead_ but _slept_, unclosed her eyes;

Then Spring, o'erawed at her own miracle,

Fell on her knees.

Meanwhile the attendant birds,--her haste outstript,--

Chasing her voice, crowd round, and fill the air

With jocund loyalty.

With flowers Spring dressed the Earth;

Then did her mother, Earth, rejoice in her;

And she, with filial love and joy, admired,

Weeping and trembling, in the wont of maids.

Meantime her pious fame had filled the skies.

He that begat her, the almighty Sun,

Passing in regal state, did call her 'child,'

And blessed her and her mother where they sat--

Her by the imposition of bright hands,

The Earth with kisses. Then the Spring would go,

Abashed with bliss,--decorous in the face

Of love parental. But the Earth stood up,

And held her there; and, these encircling, came

All kind of happy shapes that wander space,

Brightening the air. And they two sang like gods

Under the answering heavens."

[Illustration: FIG. 29.--"The attendant birds crowd round, and fill

the air."]

We think that the ancients, if they had seriously reflected upon

the important part played by the sun in the economy of nature; how

it is the heart, and spring, and inner power of every movement and

manifestation of life; how it is, as Sir David Brewster says, the

centre and soul of our world, the lamp that lights it, the fire that

heats it, the magnet that guides and controls it, the fountain of

colour, which gives its azure to the sky, its verdure to the fields,

its rainbow-hues to the gay world of flowers, and the purple light

of love to the marble cheek of youth and beauty;--we think that the

ancients, if they had thought upon, or had known, all this, would not

have given the earth a chief place in our system. And that they did

so is all the more strange when we remember that they attributed to

the world a _soul_ (the "soul of the world" is a favourite idea with

the great philosophers of antiquity), and looked upon the planets as

living creatures.

But they were swayed by that egotistical instinct which leads man to

refer everything to himself, even the very gods which he has created

after his own image. The Bible teaches us that there is but one God.

Alas! are there not as many gods as there are men? Does not each of

us create a deity in accordance with his own inclinations, his mode

of thought, his degree of mental culture, the sphere of his ideas? Is

the God of a tolerant philosopher identical with that of a bigoted

fanatic? It is not so much due to a deceitful appearance, an optical

illusion, as to a kind of innate infatuation, that the human race

have come to consider the planet they inhabit as the centre of the

universe.

CAUSES OF THE CIRCULATION OF THE SAP.

Let us return to the sap, the life-blood of vegetation.

How is it that its movement does not recommence at the same time in

all plants? Why are some clothed with leaves when the others are

scarcely budding? Wherefore, in certain genera, do the flowers appear

before the leaves?

Some authorities assert,--but facts show it to be a purely gratuitous

supposition,--that the flower, which, with the fruit, seems to be

the goal or object of vegetation, demands a greater activity on the

part of the sap. But, in truth, many trees and shrubs, such as the

poplar, the willow, and the hazel, flourish at an epoch when the sap

is barely aroused from its protracted lethargy.

These are questions which have still to be answered.

But upon yet another question we may dwell at some detail. What is

the cause of the circulation of the sap?

To the best of our knowledge, this important problem has never been

propounded as it should have been. And for this reason: all observers

who have taken up its consideration have had in view only the _rising

sap_, and the cause of its rising. Evidently this is but a _part_

of the problem. The ascending sap, after undergoing an important

modification in the leaves, becomes the _descending_ sap; just as the

venous blood is transformed, on coming into contact with the air in

the lungs, into arterial blood. It is this alternative movement of

_going and coming_ which constitutes the circulation both of the sap

and the blood, and which ceases completely only with the life of the

plant or the animal. We must, therefore, bear in mind,--which has not

been hitherto done,--these two opposite, yet indissolubly connected,

movements, before we can approach with advantage the solution of the

proposed question.[40]

Science consists in discovering, among the different ways of looking

at things which present themselves to the mind, the one which appears

to explain most clearly the phenomena submitted to observation. He

who doubts the accuracy of our remark need only join us in reviewing

the different opinions enunciated up to the present time on the cause

of the rise of the sap.

Grew, an English botanist, a contemporary of Newton, and his

fellow-member in the Royal Society of London, attributed the rise of

the sap to the play of the utricles of which the plant is composed.

These utricles, he said, maintain a close intercommunication; through

their contraction, the sap passes from the lower to the upper, and

thus arrives almost at the top of the plant. Grew's authority carried

conviction to the minds of many botanists, particularly to those

of his compatriots. Yet was his opinion altogether imaginary; the

supposed contraction of the utricles does not exist.

* * * * *

La Hire, a French botanist, who flourished at the beginning of

the eighteenth century,--son of the geometrician of the same

name,--pretended that he could account for the rise of the sap by the

play of the little valves with which the interior of the sap-vessels

was furnished; at the same time he assigned a very active _rôle_

to the fibres of the roots. The fibres elevate, he said, the whole

column of superimposed liquid, incessantly introducing, by a kind of

suction, new fluids into the organs.

Unfortunately, the "play of the little valves, with which the

interior of the sap-vessels is furnished," is a pure invention of La

Hire's. Instead of growing wise by experiment, he suffered himself

to be led astray by a false analogy. Valves are found in the veins

of man and the mammals; but no one has ever seen the sides of the

vessels of a plant garnished with valves to induce a circulation of

the sap.

Mariotte, so well known by his researches into the compressibility

of air, represented the rise of the sap as dependent upon what he

called "the attraction taking place in the narrow tubes"--upon what,

in fact, we now term _capillarity_. "This first entrance of water

into the roots is in obedience," he said, "to a law of nature; for

wherever very narrow tubes exist which touch the water, it enters

into them, and even rises, contrary to its natural inclination."

* * * * *

Many botanists adopted the opinion of Mariotte. But if it were

well founded, all _capillary_ bodies, even inorganic ones, ought

to present a circulatory movement analogous to that of the sap.

Now, this is not the case. A body must be animated, must be living,

for attraction to take place in the narrow tubes, and to produce a

movement comparable to that of the nutritive liquid.

* * * * *

Malpighi attributed the rise of the sap to the alternating

rarefaction and condensation of this liquid by heat; Perrault, to a

kind of fermentation; De Saussure, to a peculiar irritability of the

vessels. Of these three hypotheses, the first is purely physical; the

second, chemical; the third, vital. So, as we see, there is something

for everybody--_chacun à son gout!_

* * * * *

The same question has, in our own day, been taken up from a new point

of view, on the occasion of Dutrochet's discovery of the endosmose.

This philosopher was one of the first to perceive that two liquids,

separated from one another by a membrane, quickly effect or induce a

current which always carries the thinner liquid towards the denser,

and ends by mingling the two completely. "It is endosmose," he said,

"which produces at one and the same time the progression of the sap

by _impulsion_, and its progression by _affluxion_. The sap would

receive its impulse in the spongioles of the roots; thence would be

carried towards the upper parts by the turgescence of the organs--by

the affluxion, which would thus act as a forcible mode of suction."

The basis of this theory is, that the sap contained in the upper

parts will be more concentrated or denser than that in the lower

portions of the same plant. But this is a mere supposition. And even

this supposition has been swept away by the recent experiments of

Hartig and others, which show that the difference in density between

the two saps is not only almost null, but in many ligneous plants the

lower sap is, on the contrary, denser than the upper.[41]

* * * * *

Finally, and more recently, M. Joseph Boehm has put forth a theory

which offers some points of analogy with that of Grew. According to

Boehm, the rise of the sap is the effect of a suction, the cause of

which must be sought both in the atmospheric pressure and in the

transpiration which takes place through the organs, and notably

through the leaves of the plant. The part which he attributes to the

cellules, of which the organs are composed, he thus describes:--"When

the superficial cellules of the plant lose water by transpiration,"

he says, "of two things, one will happen: either these cellules will

contract and shrivel, or they carry up, by a kind of aspiration, to

the neighbouring cellules, situated in deeper layers, a quantity of

water equivalent to what they had lost. In the normal condition, the

latter is always the result; each cellule takes from its neighbour

what itself has lost, and this action, becoming more and more

general, is continued from the leaves to the extremities of the

roots. The cellules of the spongioles replace the water which they

have yielded, from the humid medium surrounding them."

In support of this theory,[42] M. Boehm has made several experiments,

which, we fear, will not carry conviction to every mind.

* * * * *

In the different theories which we have been attempting to explain,

their authors, as it seems to us, have neglected an essential

element--the _life_ of the plant. Then, the experiments undertaken

by way of proof, have been made upon cut stems or branches, which,

consequently, did not enjoy their integral vitality. In fact, the

results indicated could just as well have been obtained with inert as

with living matter.

Taking into account all these considerations, we are doubtful whether

any value can be placed on the theories just enunciated. Undoubtedly,

physical causes, such as capillarity, heat, evaporation, atmospheric

pressure, electricity, have a certain marked and constant action. But

this action is here complex; it is found combined with a new force,

whose effects constitute precisely the profound difference which

exists between the massive mineral framework of the globe and the

transitory beings peopling its surface. It matters little whether we

call it _vital force_, or otherwise; sufficient that it _exists_. We

must, therefore, allow for its influence when endeavouring to explain

the varied movements of which plants, as well as animals, may be the

seat.

_A._--PLANTS.

_The Daisy_ (_Bellis perennis_).

"Wel by reason men it call maie

The daisie, or els the eye of the daie."[43]

Among all the treasures of the floral world, that which should excite

in each of us the tenderest emotion, and most readily stir up in our

minds thoughts too deep for tears, is the Daisy,--that favourite of

our innocent and happy childhood.

Ah! would we were now as content with simple joys as in the days when

that wee, modest, crimson-tipped flower was to us a beauty, a prize,

and a charm!

[Illustration: FIG. 30.--"The Daisie scattered in each mead and

down."]

We wonder how many of our poets have done homage to the sweet and

simple "nursling," or rather, whether by any _true_ poet it has been

neglected. Cowper reminds us that in

"The spring and play-time of the year"

the village-wife and her little ones go forth to

"Prank their hair with daisies."

James Montgomery, whose admiration of nature is somewhat frigid, can

yet remind us that--

"The rose has but a summer reign,

The daisy never dies."

Chaucer warms into enthusiasm when he thinks of its pastoral,

innocent gracefulness ("simplex munditiis"):--

"So glad am I when in the Daisy's presence,

That I am fain to do her reverence;

For she of all sweet flowers is the flower

With virtue filled, and honourable power;

For ever fair alike, and fresh of hue,

As well in winter as in summer new."

Let us not omit a reference to quaint but genial William Browne:--

"The Daisie, scattered on each meade and down,

A golden tuft within a silver crowne:

Fair fall that dainty flower! and may there be

No shepherd graced that does not honour thee!"

Yes! let no poet be taken to your heart of hearts who has no love

for the "flower white and rede,"--in French, called "La Belle

Marguerite,"--

"The op'ning gowan, wet wi' dew,"

--Burns's "bonnie gem,"--the flower of the meadow and the lea, of the

woodland and the vale.

A modest, unassuming flower, destined to be trodden under the feet

of the thoughtless, it withstands the rigorous breath of winter, is

beautiful throughout the circle of the year--_Bellis perennis_, as

the Swedish botanist not infelicitously called it. Its vegetation

is arrested only during the harshest frosts; but it resumes its

living growth as soon as it becomes sensible of the first rays of the

spring-time sun.

It is at the moment of nature's awakening, about "the solemn

Easter-tide," that this "sweet nursling of the vernal year" displays

all the simple coquettishness of its chaplet of flowers,--that

chaplet which has also procured for it the name of the tiny

"Marguerite,"--that is, "little pearl,"--a name which the French have

adopted from the Latin--_Margarita_.

Here let us pause, and propound a question.

How would you propose to test the real character, the genuine nature,

of friend or acquaintance?

Your answers, dear readers (believe me, I hear them clearly!), are

very various. Some of you say, that the best means of sounding the

depths of the human heart is by bringing before it a misery which

needs to be relieved. Others recommend the bestowal of a benefit. But

such processes of analysis appear to me far from being infallible;

too wide a margin is left for the operation of sentiments of pride

or vanity. Why not conduct the man whose real character you wish

to discover into a meadow enamelled with sparkling daisies? Thus

you would impose upon nature the task of interrogating him. If he

manifest feelings of indifference, you will do well to regard him

with suspicion: take care how you admit him into your intimacy; for

his heart must be cold, and his mind troubled--

"The man that takes not daisies to his soul

Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils."

But to return to our daisy. Observe how, by its organs, it yields

itself--in anticipation, as it were--to its fate. And, first, its

long and fibrous roots anchor it so solidly in the soil that the

cattle which browse it cannot tear it up. Next, its stem is so short

that it seems to be blended with the roots; one might almost doubt

whether any existed. But, if you look at it more closely, you may

readily assure yourself that the stem is the point whence issue the

recumbent branches which bear the leaves. Why does not the daisy

boast of stems erect and free? Would they not be incessantly bent or

broken by the merry troops of children who love to play and dance

upon Nature's carpet, the soft green sward?

* * * * *

The leaves of our daisy, then, seem to issue directly from the roots,

without the intermediary of an _apparent_ stem, which must not be

confounded--recollect this, dear reader!--with the stalk or peduncle

that bears the crown of petals. These leaves in form resemble tiny

crenelated spatules, with the handles flattened, and the edges

trimmed with little hairs or fibres. The peduncle, too, seems to

start immediately from the roots. The principal part of the peduncle

is surmounted, as already hinted, by the flower, to which we next

direct our inquisitive and searching gaze.

What shall we call it? To what shall we liken it? To a gilded

button framed in a pearl. This button, this "yellow eye," as

Tabernæmontanus, a botanist of the sixteenth century, named

it,--the "eye of day" of our old poets,--a drop of gold in a rim of

silver,--is not like any other flower; is quite a world or system of

Lilliputian blossoms, each of which is represented by a miniature

tube, yellow at the summit, and of a greenish white at the base,--the

said tube being the union, or combination, of the tops or summits

forming the central gem, the gilded button, the drop of gold. You may

readily note this arrangement in the larger variety of daisy, the

_Chrysanthemum leucanthum_ of Linnæus,--two Latinised Greek words

which signify, literally, "golden-blossomed white flower."

If you doubt whether each of these tiny tubes be a flower, you have

only to analyse them with the assistance of your ever-useful lens.

The analysis of one will suffice; for all the others resemble it.

Now, with your penknife, split the tube throughout its entire length:

you will thus lay bare all the parts which enter into the composition

of a veritable flower, commencing with the most conspicuous. Through

the magnifying glass you can see five stamens,--free as regards

their short filaments, but united by their elongated anthers;

a characteristic which gives name to the great family of the

_Synantheraceæ_, of which family our daisy is an honoured member;--a

bifid (_i.e._, cloven in two) style traversing the middle of the

anthers, which form for it a kind of sheath (see Fig. 31, _a_);--a

monopetalous, tubular, and obscurely bilabiated (two-lipped) corolla,

inserted at the summit of an unilocular (one-lobed) ovary, which is

attached to the calyx (see Fig. 31, _b_). In these tiny flowers,

then, which we call in Latin _flosculi_, in French _fleurons_, in

English _florets_, nothing is deficient. As they are shaped like

tubes, we call them, by way of distinction, _tubulifloral_.

But what are these white rays, lightly shaded with pink, which

enclose or encircle the florets? (See Fig. 32, _a_.) Examine them

at their points of insertion. You will perceive there some traces

of reproductive organs, among which the style is most prominent. As

for the corolla, it is represented only by its brown lip, which is

immeasurably developed. It is this exaggerated development which

constitutes the _white rays_, or petals, that prove so attractive to

the eye. (See Fig. 32, _b_.) Do not forget to observe, by the way,

that they are rose-tinted only on the side which directly undergoes

the action of the light. To distinguish them from the tubular

florets,--the _tubulifloræ_,--these "white rays" have been called

_ligulate florets_, or _ligulifloræ_.

The complete flowers (or the florets) and the rays (or partially

abortive flowers) form, in their aggregate, what our botanists

have agreed to call an _inflorescence of the capitula_. Disposed

quincuncially on an ovoid receptacle, or _phoranth_, both are grouped

(Fig. 32, _c_) in alternating rows.

[Illustration: FIG. 31.]

[Illustration: FIG. 32.]

To explain thoroughly this species of inflorescence, we will venture

upon an hypothesis. Let us suppose that we could elongate the said

ovoid receptacle as if it were a ball of wax,--it would be changed

into a sheath-like inflorescence; all our smaller florets, whose

union composes what is improperly called the _flower_ of the daisy,

would be ranged around an elongated, instead of being placed upon a

flattened axis. This axis characterises all the Synantheraceæ of the

family of the Compositæ (a sub-order); sometimes naked, sometimes

garnished with varied hairs, either shrunken or persistent, it has

furnished several characters useful in the classification of genera

and species. But possessed with a mania for complicating everything,

botanists designate it indifferently _receptacle_, _phoranthe_,

_clinanthe_, etc. Why not employ one and the same word to distinguish

one and the same thing? Why not have preserved the name _axis_, and

have attached to it such qualifying terms as might be necessary to

indicate simple differences of forms?

* * * * *

The ancients looked upon nature,--I cannot sufficiently insist

upon this theme,--with quite other eyes than we do. The study and

description of characters, so indispensable to our classifications

and nomenclatures, appeared to them a useless labour; they had not

even an idea of its value. But it was of signal importance to them

to investigate the virtues and properties of plants, so far as they

might be rendered available for the preservation of health and the

cure of disease.

Our daisy is common in Greece. Theophrastus, therefore, ought to

have known it, though he does not refer to it. It is common also in

the plains of Italy. Pliny was the first to describe it, under the

name of _bellis_; he attributes to it the properties of the St John's

wort.[44] And it is noteworthy that the daisy belongs to the same

family as the latter; a circumstance certainly not known in the days

of Pliny.

The botanists of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are by no

means niggards in the eulogiums which they lavish on the medicinal

properties of our graceful Synantheracea. Bock (better known,

perhaps, under the name of _Tragus_, a Goat), who mistook the yellow

anthers for the seeds, recommended the leaves of the _Gänzeblume_

(goose-flower, as he called it) as a laxative. Tabernæmontanus

prescribed them as a remedy for cramps in the stomach and the

spitting of blood.

Ray, who expresses his astonishment that the Greeks had not spoken of

it, looked upon the daisy as an excellent vulnerary. "Externally,"

says he, "we employ it with success in the form either of a poultice

or a fomentation; for internal treatment, we mix its juice with

vulnerary potions."--These properties procured it the name of

_Consolida minor_, which would make it the pendant of the larger

Consolida, _Symphytum officinale_, a species of the Boraginaceæ, very

common in damp and shady localities.

Ruel recommended cataplasms of daisies and cowslips for gout and

scrofulous tumours. Chomel affirmed that he knew by experience

that the flowers of the daisy and the _herb robert_[45] (_Geranium

Robertianum_), if dried in a hot dish, and applied to the head,

considerably relieved headache.[46]

Wepfer set great value on a mixture of daisy, cress, and rummularia

in the treatment of pneumonia; and Michaelis assures us that he had

cured dropsies by the use of the flowers of the daisy cooked as a

broth.

Tournefort, who was very partial to this kind of observation,--now

repudiated by our botanists,--says, that the daisy, taken as a

warm drink or a decoction, quickens the blood when congealed by a

very severe attack of cold, as happens in pneumonia; it removes

obstructions, facilitates the circulation, and gives the fibres an

opportunity of recovering their elasticity.[47]

Garidel sums up in the following words the result of his personal

observations:--"I have frequently remarked that the juice of the

daisy acts as a laxative, and even as a purgative; the decoction does

not have that effect so often as Schroeder observes, who says that

mothers frequently give the leaves as a gentle aperient to their

children.... Care should be taken not to administer this remedy

indifferently to all pleuretics, nor at any season; for if we give it

when the expectoration is easy, we run the risk, by the employment

of a laxative at a wrong time, of spoiling everything, and checking

the expectoration. This I have seen occur in several cases, where the

remedy had been administered by a hermit."[48]

Can it be true that the commonest plants are the most useful? Nature

is quite capable of affording us these surprises; nature, who, by her

shifting and proteiform movements, never ceases to laugh at human

theories. But men, as was said long ago, have eyes, though not to

see; and everybody also knows, from his own experience, that he has

ears, not to understand!

However this may be, the daisy, which, as we have seen, was formerly

so extolled for its officinal properties, is now-a-days completely

ignored by physicians. What, then, are we to conclude? That all the

remedies in vogue--melancholy to confess!--are an affair of fashion.

When men shall have resumed perukes, and women abandoned chignons

for furbelows, we shall remember, perhaps, the virtues of the lowly,

tender daisy.

We cannot take leave of our favourite wild-flower without repeating

Wordsworth's beautiful stanzas. He takes as his motto a fine passage

from Wither, quaint old George Wither:--

"Her [the Muse's] divine skill taught me this,

That from everything I saw

I could some instruction draw,

And raise pleasure to the height

Through the meanest object's sight.

By the murmur of a spring

Or the least bough's rustelling;

By a daisy whose leaves spread

Shut when Titan goes to bed;...

She could more infuse in me

Than all Nature's beauties can

In some other wiser man."

On this hint our great meditative poet speaks, and speaks most

tenderly and truly:--

"In youth from rock to rock I went,

From hill to hill, in discontent

Of pleasure high and turbulent,

Most pleased when most uneasy;

But now my own delights I make,--

My thirst at every rill can slake,

And gladly Nature's love partake

Of thee, sweet daisy!...

"By violets in their secret mews

The flowers the wanton zephyrs choose;

Proud be the rose, with rains and dews

Her head impearling;

Thou liv'st with less ambitious aim,

Yet hast not gone without thy fame;

Thou art, indeed, by many a claim,

The poet's darling.

"If to a rock from rains he fly,

Or, some bright day of April sky,

Imprison'd by hot sunshine lie,

Near the green holly,

And wearily at length should fare;

He need but look about, and there

Thou art! a friend at hand, to scare

His melancholy.

"A hundred times, by rock or bower,

Ere thus I have lain couch'd an hour,

Have I derived from thy sweet power

Some apprehension;

Some steady love; some brief delight;

Some memory that had taken flight;

Some chime of fancy, wrong or right,

Or stray invention....

"Oft do I sit by thee at ease,

And weave a web of similes,

Loose types of things through all degrees.

Thoughts of thy raising;

And many a fond and idle name

I give to thee, for praise or blame,

As is the humour of the game,

While I am gazing.

"A nun demure, of lowly port,

Or sprightly maiden of Love's court,

In thy simplicity the sport

Of all temptations;

A queen in crown of rubies dress'd;

A starveling in a scanty vest;

Are all, as seem to suit thee best,

Thy appellations.

"A little cyclops, with one eye

Staring to threaten and defy,--

That thought comes next; and instantly

The freak is over;

The shape will vanish, and, behold!

A silver shield with boss of gold,

That spreads itself, some fairy bold

In fight to cover.

"I see thee glittering from afar,

And there thou art a pretty star;

Not quite so fair as many are

In heaven above thee!

Yet like a star, with glittering crest,

Self-pois'd in air, thou seem'st to rest:

May peace come never to his breast

Who shall reprove thee!"

We may add that we know but of four references to the daisy in

Shakspeare. In _Cymbeline_, act iv., scene 2:--

"Let us

Find out the prettiest daisied plot we can."

In _Love's Labour's Lost_, act v., scene 2:--

"Where daisies pied[49] and violets blue

Do paint the meadows with delight."

Again, in _Hamlet_, act iv., scene 7:--

"There with fantastic garlands did she come

Of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples."

[Illustration: FIG. 33.]

And, lastly, in _Hamlet_, act iv., scene 5:--

"There's a daisy; I would give you some violets, but they

withered all when my father died."

In Milton there are but two allusions. In the Masque of _Comus_:--

"By dimpled brook and fountain-brim,

The wood-nymphs, deck'd with daisies trim,

Their merry wakes and pastimes keep."

And in _L'Allegro_:[50]--

"Meadows trim with daisies pied."

THE TULIP.

"The pied windflowers and the tulip tall."

--SHELLEY.

It is probable that, for the majority of floral amateurs, the name

of the tulip is inseparable from a plant which, with the hyacinth

and the lily, becomes, in the merry spring-time, the ornament of

our gardens. Yet, towards the end of March, the observer will

occasionally discover, in the woods and groves, the _wild tulip_,[51]

the _Tulipa sylvestris_ of Linnæus, which may, perhaps, be very

properly taken for the type of a small tribe of the Liliaceæ. It

is easily recognised by its flower, which resembles a large yellow

campanula, slightly green on the exterior. Like all plants of the

same family, it has but a single floral envelope or perianth, which

may be either a corolla or a calyx as you will. The initiated protest

and asseverate that it is a calyx; but the _profanum vulgus_, who

compose the majority, will have it to be a corolla, on account of its

colouring. To cut the knot, and please all parties, our beautiful

floral envelope has been denominated a _petaloid perianth_.

The divisions of this perianth, six in number, may, in truth, be

considered as _petals_; they are detached down to the base, and full

in proportion as the pistil is developed. The latter is composed

of three stigmata, attached, without the intermediary of a stylus

(sessile stigmata), to a free ovary (that is, an ovary not joined

to the perianth), which, as it develops, forms a capsule with three

angular projections marking so many lobes; each of these lobes

includes a great number of compressed seeds. As in all the Liliaceæ,

and in many other vegetable families, the stamens, six in number, are

_hypogynous_,--that is to say, inserted at the base of the division

of the perianth. The stem, nearly two feet in height, bears a single

flower only: the leaves are lanceolate, like all of the family,

and the root is formed of a bulb, with thin and brownish-coloured

external _tunicæ_.

Is the wild tulip an original species, or only a degenerate variety

of the cultivated tulip (_Tulipa Gesneriana_)? The question is one

not very easily solved.

It is generally admitted that the cultivated tulip,--which everybody

knows,--was introduced into Europe from the East, towards the middle

of the sixteenth century. It is, at all events, certain that none of

our older botanists speak of our wild tulip. Dodonnée himself refers

to the Eastern tulip only, of which he was the first to give, in his

"Historia Stirpium," a tolerable delineation.

A circumstance which would favour the belief that the tulip was

imported from the East is the Oriental derivation of its name:

_tulipa_, in Italian _tulipano_, comes to us, it is said, from the

Turkish _tuliband_, or the Persian _dulbend_, whence is obtained, by

corruption, _turban_, the characteristic head-gear of the Orientals.

Thus, at bottom, _tulip_ and _turban_ are the same word, only altered

in form.

* * * * *

Who does not know with what a glory of colours the skill of our

horticulturists has succeeded in clothing the tulip?

Inasmuch as the cultivated species bears the distinctive addition

of _Gesneriana_,--and of this species all existing tulips are but

varieties,--we might reasonably suppose that Gesner, the celebrated

Swiss naturalist (who died at Zurich, aged sixty-nine, in 1565),

was the first to speak of it. But he makes no allusion to it in his

"Historia Plantarum" (printed at Bâle in 1541); he only refers to it

in his "Additions" to the works of Valerius Cordus, published in 1561.

We subjoin a literal translation of the words of Conrad Gesner:--

"In the year 1559, at the beginning of April, I saw at Augsburg, in

the garden of F. H. Herwart, magistrate of that town, a plant whose

seed had been brought from Constantinople, or, according to some,

from Cappadocia. It was called _tulip_."

About the same epoch, this plant was cultivated at Vienna, in the

gardens of some wealthy amateurs; whence several tulip-bulbs were

afterwards sent into England.

This ornamental plant, whose splendour is of such brief duration,

became, towards the middle of the sixteenth century, the object of

a commercial speculation, which marks an epoch in horticultural

annals. The towns of Amsterdam, Haarlem, Utrecht, Alkmar, Leyden, and

Rotterdam, were the head-quarters of the new trade.

The years 1634 to 1637 marked its apogee, its culmination; it was

the reign of the _tulipomania_,--a malady which, notwithstanding

its severity, does not figure among our pathological nomenclatures.

Bulbs of the variety called _Viceroy_ were sold for 3000 florins

(£235) each; and amateurs paid even as high as 5000 florins (£430)

for the _Semper Augustus_ variety! Those who had not the needful

amount of ready money disposed of their goods, their cattle, and

their furniture. And not only the horticulturists, but the seamen,

and artisans, and servants, plunged headlong, into this frantic

gambling. Tulip bulbs were then as eagerly sought after as shares in

the company of the Mississippi in the days of Law,--or in the South

Sea Stocks, also set afloat by that ingenious financier.

But it was not so much a love of flowers as a lust of speculation

which lay at the bottom of this famous mania. For example, a

gentleman engaged a merchant to deliver, at the end of six months,

a bulb worth 1000 florins. When the time came, the price of the

bulb had either gone up or down, and the contractor paid only the

difference; as for delivering the wares, neither party cared about

it. It was, therefore, the exact equivalent of a speculation in the

funds or in railway shares. The transactions took place on the public

exchanges, as well as in coffee-houses, inns, and on the promenades.

They originated a fertile crop of abuses, and to put an end to them

the intervention of the Government was required.

However, we may cite several examples of distinguished men who have

cherished a partiality for the tulip, in the better sense of the

word. Among these was Justus Lipsius, the great philologist. In his

garden he cultivated with his own hands, it is said, the rarest

varieties, and his floricultural tastes were shared by two of his

intimate friends, Dodonée (Diodati) and L'Écluse, the two most

illustrious botanists of their time.

But all these details, however curious and interesting, do not teach

us whether our wild tulip has sprung from the cultivated germs. As it

is impossible to solve this problem experimentally, we are forced to

be satisfied with a simple conjecture.

And, for our own part, we are strongly of opinion that the wild

and cultivated tulips may, from their very origin, have co-existed

independently of one another. And now to put forward a fact in

support of this statement.

THE HELIOTROPE.

With the Heliotrope every lover of flowers is familiar; it is not

less prized for its delicate fragrance than the tulip for its

glowing colours. No doubt exists as to the country from which we

have imported the cultivated heliotrope, nor as to the epoch when it

was introduced: it came from Peru, whence the name given to it by

Linnæus, _Heliotropium Peruvianium_; and was brought into Europe,

in 1740, by Joseph de Jussieu. Although not known in Europe above

a hundred and thirty years, it is now an "old, familiar face" in

every garden. Now, by the side of the cultivated species, a native

of the New World, we can place a wild variety, indigenous to the Old

World, common in our own country, and, indeed, in all the countries

of temperate Europe; whence it has received the appellation of

_Heliotropium Europæum_.

The European species, let me state, is in every respect similar to

the Peruvian species, except that its flowers are inodorous and of a

paler blue. Yet it was known before the discovery of America,--before

the discovery of those regions from which we have obtained the

cultivated heliotrope. Thus, the two varieties have existed

contemporaneously, and have flourished independently of each other,

from their very origin. Why should not such be the case with the wild

and cultivated tulip?

THE ANEMONES.

From our Spring posy the delicate Anemones must not be omitted.

More than twenty species are cultivated in Great Britain, and I

hardly know to which I would give the preference. They are called

by that most unmeaning term, "florist's flowers," and from the

attention bestowed upon them, the cultivated varieties have been

greatly improved. But you and I, dear reader, will go forth into

the "wild woods," and enjoy the rich gifts of nature untampered

by horticultural science. It is towards the end of March that the

wood anemone (_Anemone nemorosa_) begins to expand its graceful

leaves and snow-white buds to the stray sunbeams that force their

way through the embowering branches of stately elms and spreading

beeches, and in April it has attained its full glory, contributing

largely to the beauty and the show which then embellish the

forest glade. Snow-white, and faint rose-red, and soft delicate

lilac,--these are the prevailing hues of its tender petals.

It is said that the wood anemone never blossoms earlier than March

16, and never later than April 2. It opens out its loveliness to

the sun about the same time as the swallow returns from the genial

South to our land of pleasant verdure. Country children associate it

with the appearance of the cuckoo, and call it the "cuckoo flower,"

but the "wandering voice" is later than the woodland blossom in its

welcome to the spring.

Why is it called _Anemone_? Of course, the English name is derived

from the Greek άνεμος, "wind;" but what connexion is there between

the wind and the flower? Credulous old Pliny asserted that it never

bloomed except when the wind blew. Some of our botanical writers

explain that it shivers and bends before the winds of March and the

breezes of April. Others remind us that though generally found in the

shelter of the groves, it will thrive lustily in windy and exposed

localities. But I suspect the true reason of the name is its peculiar

sensitiveness to atmospheric changes. As a foreteller of the storm it

is not less trustworthy than a barometer, never failing to fold up

its exquisite petals when the winds are gathering over the distant

hills.

Our plant is considered injurious food for cattle; and it was on

account of its unwholesome properties, perhaps, that the Egyptians

regarded it as an emblem of sickness; or the idea may have been

suggested by its frail and feeble appearance.

The yellow wood anemone is a rare and beautiful variety, which I have

sometimes met with among the chalky downs of Kent. Its botanical

designation is _Anemone ranunculoides_.

A still richer species is the _Anemone pulsatilla_, or Pasque Flower

Anemone; a silky downy plant, easily recognised by its blossom of

glowing purple. The blue mountain anemone (_Anemone Apennina_) is

only to be found, as its name indicates, on the bold rugged sides of

lofty mountain-heights.

The Anemones belong to a very important order,--the _Ranunculaceæ_,

or Crowfoot family,--which is divided into five sub-orders: 1.

Clematidæ; 2. Anemoneæ; 3. Ranunculaceæ; 4. Helliboreæ; and 5.

Actœæ, or Pœniæ. Linnæus distinguishes forty-one known genera,

comprising a thousand species. There are nine British genera of

Anemoneæ.

In Drayton's "Poly-Olbion" occurs a rich descriptive passage,--an

exquisite "flower-piece,"--which, on account of its beauty, deserves

to be better known, and more frequently quoted. The poet is enlarging

upon the floral rites which were celebrated at the espousals of the

rivers Thame and Isis, and sets before us a bright bevy of Nymphs

and Naiads; engaged in twining "dainty chaplets" to deck the persons

of the bride and bridegroom. The stalwart Thame,--so it seems to

them,--should not be "dressed with flowers to gardens that belong,"

but with blossoms plucked from his own meads and pastures. As most of

those selected are fit for a spring-time nosegay, we may well enrich

our pages with quaint old Drayton's enumeration of them:--

"The Primrose placing first, because that in the Spring

It is the first appears; then only flourishing;

The azured Harebell next with them they neatly mixt,

T' allay whose luscious smell they Woodbine placed betwixt.

Among those things of scent there prick they in the Lily,

And near to that again her sister Daffodilly.

To sort these flowers of show with others that were sweet,

The Cowslip there they couch, and the Oxlip for her meet;

The Columbine amongst them they sparingly do set,

The yellow King-cup, wrought in many a curious fret;[52]

And now and then among, of Eglantine a spray,

By which again a course of Lady-mocks they lay;

The Crow-flower, and thereby the Clorra-flower they stick,

The Daisy over all those sundry sweets so thick,

As Nature doth herself to imitate her right;

Who seems in that her 'pearl' so greatly to delight,

That every plain therewith she powdereth to behold.

The crimson Darnel-flower, the Blue-bottle and gold,

Which, though esteemed but weeds, yet, for their dainty hues,

And for their scent, not ill, they for their purpose choose.

Thus, having told you how the Bridegroom Thames was drest,

I'll show you how the Bride, fair Isis, they invest."

Here the poet resorts to the garden for his decorative wreath, but

is careful, as we shall see, to eschew "florist's flowers," and to

select only our dear old favourites:--

"The red, the dainty white, the gaudy Damask Rose,

The brave Carnation, then, of sweet and sovereign power

(So of his colour called, although a July flower),

With the other of his kind, the speckled and the pale;

Then the odoriferous Pink that sends forth such a gale

Of sweetness, yet in scents as various as in sorts;

The purple Violet then the Pansy there supports;

The Marigold above t' adorn the arched bar;

The double Daisy, Thrift, the Button-Bachelor;

Sweet William, Sops in Wine, the Campion, and to these

Some Lavender they put, and Rosemary, and Bays;

Sweet Marjoram with her like, sweet Basil rare for smell,

With many a flower whose name were now too long to tell."

If our space permitted, we should like to gossip awhile about each

of the flowers commemorated by our old poet, for to each attaches

some legend, or romantic tradition, some rural observance, or sweet

poetical association. But we must continue our researches, and they

bring us now to the _Arum_.

THE ARUM.

To the French the Arum is commonly known as the Calf's foot (_Pied de

veau_). It is a common enough plant, growing on the borders of the

wood, and delighting especially in the shade of the hazel trees, but

it bears not the slightest resemblance to the hoof of any quadruped

whatsoever, unless, indeed, to a very fervid imagination there should

be visible a shadowy similitude in its leaf.

And it is, in truth, asserted--but, not having the eye of faith, the

editor cannot see any ground for the assertion--that its sagillate

or arrow-headed leaves, marked by a strongly-defined midrib, bear a

certain likeness to the "under bi-ungulated face" of the foot of a

young ruminant. Appearing in the early days of spring, they contrast

agreeably, by their shining verdure, with the colour of the dead

leaves heaped up at the base of the hedgerows. Simultaneously with

its leaves comes forth a curious organ,--rare in vegetables of

temperate regions, common in the tropical palms, and characteristic

of the family of the Aroidaceæ, to which our Arum belongs. This

organ, rolled up in a coil or spiral, is named the _spathe_.

It protects the flowers in their young state, and, as they are

developed, gradually falls off. Its colour is a greenish yellow; at

the summit it is sometimes streaked with purplish veins, and at the

base it swells out in a globose fashion.

A small thermometer, introduced into the interior of the rolled-up

spathe, indicates a rise of temperature equal to one or two degrees

above that of the external atmosphere. Whence comes this difference?

Because in the spathe is frequently found imprisoned another organ,

the seat of the mystery of reproduction. This organ is a fleshy axis,

on which are arranged the flowers in two distinct rings; the upper is

occupied by the stamens, reduced to simple anthers (sessile stamens);

observe the filamentous appendages--they are abortive ovaries. These

same appendages also surmount the lower ring, where several rows

are set of sessile ovaries; each ovary composed of a single lobe,

containing a very small number of ovules, the majority of which

miscarry as the ovaries become metamorphosed into bright red berries:

these are the fruits which appear in autumn; they form a spike or ear

of coral, each containing, ordinarily, a single seed. The flowers, as

a consequence of this separation of the two sexes, are _monœcious_;

the succulent axis which bears them is called a spadix.[53] On

tearing open the spathe, our glance first rests upon the apex of the

spadix, which has a club-like form, and is of a beautiful violet-red

colour. The two rings of sexual organs have much less attraction for

the profane; the lower ring, loaded with female flowers, is more

prominent than the upper ring, which bears the male flowers.

The root of our Arum also deserves a particular examination. It is

a white tubercular stock or stem, containing a quantity of fecula,

mixed, as in the West Indian manioc, with an acrid poisonous

principle which produces a burning painful heat in the throat. This

injurious principle is destroyed by exposure to the fire, and by

repeatedly boiling the plant in water. After being thus heated, there

remains only the fecula, in the form of a white powder, which, in

times of scarcity, supplies a very nutritious food. "I made use of

it," says Bosc, "during the storms of the Revolution, when I had

taken refuge in the solitudes of the forest of Montmorency. This

plant is so abundant in this forest, and in many other localities,

that, at the epoch I speak of, it would have ensured the subsistence

of several thousands of men, if they had known its alimentary

properties. I was seriously counting on the resources which it would

place at my disposal, when the death of Robespierre relieved me from

my difficulties."[54]

Our _arum_, which we have taken as a type of the family of the

Aroidaceæ, is called _maculatum_, or "spotted," in allusion to the

white and violet spots with which its leaves are besprinkled.

[Illustration: FIG. 34.--The _Arum arisarum_.]

Another, and not less interesting species, is the _Arum arisarum_.

(See Fig. 34, _a_.) It loves to display its exquisite leafage on the

rocks bordering the "sea-marge," and is found in profusion along

almost the entire littoral of the Mediterranean. It is a precocious

flower--making its appearance about the end of December, and

flourishing until the beginning of Spring. The spathe, which in the

_Arum maculatum_ has all the aspect of an etiolated leaf, assumes,

in the _Arum arisarum_, the tints of a corolla,--is of a beautiful

warm red violet, streaked with white. The fleshy axis, which ought

rather to be called gynandrous (both male and female) than a spadix,

is of a red colour; naked in its upper portion, which terminates with

a kind of apple. It would remind a drummer-boy of the formidable

staff carried by his drum-major (see Fig. 34, _b_.); the stamens,

reduced to the condition of bilobed anthers, are mounted around the

central part; and the ovaries, less numerous than the stamens, occupy

the base of the axis. Each monocular ovary is crowned by a sessile

stigma, and each lobe contains a great number of erect ovules. In

the _Arum maculatum_, the number of ovules does not exceed six. Some

botanists have laid hold of this characteristic as an excuse for

withdrawing the Mediterranean species from the _arums_, and creating

a new genus, _arisarum_. The variety we have just described is, in

that case, denominated the _Arisarum vulgare_.

* * * * *

The ancients have mentioned numerous species of the _arum_. But

it is a very difficult task to bring their nomenclature into any

kind of agreement with the species described by modern botanists.

However, we may, I think, regard the _arisarum_ of Pliny and

Dioscorides as positively identical with our _Arum arisarum_.

But we are unable to admit that the _aron_, the _hepha_, the

_dracunculus_, the _dracontium_, can be, as commentators represent,

one and the same plant; still less can we admit that this plant is

our _Arum maculatum_, which is very much rarer in the south than in

the north and centre of Europe. In the solution of such problems

as these, geographical botany is an element which must not be

neglected. Unfortunately it has never been taken into account by the

commentators on the great classical authorities.

Let me advance a simple proposition. Since the potatoe has become

diseased, and the species tends to degenerate, may we not find a

substitute for it,--at least, a partial one,--among our Aroids, and,

notably, in the _Arum maculatum_?

THE RANUNCULACEÆ.

Let us return for a while to the order of Ranunculaceæ, of which

the Anemones have already furnished us with a specimen. Several very

poisonous plants are members of this order; and, in truth, very few

can be pronounced wholly innocent. I do not think there is much

harm in the _Lesser Celandine_, however--the glossy, starry flower,

yellow as a buttercup, with heart-shaped leaves, which Wordsworth has

celebrated:--

"Ere a leaf is on the bush,

In the time before the thrush

Has a thought about its nest,

Thou wilt come with half a call,

Spreading out thy glossy breast,

Like a careless prodigal;

Telling tales about the sun,

When we've little warmth or none."

There cannot be much harm in it, for in the north of Europe the

peasantry boil its leaves, and eat them as greens. It thrives in

all parts of England, in green woods and meadows, and on wild furzy

wastes and open commons; under leafy hedges, and even in the gay

pastures, among the primroses and hepaticas. A number of small,

grain-like tubers lie around it, close to the surface of the earth;

whence it was a common saying in "the days of old" that this plant

showered down wheat in its vicinity.

* * * * *

To the same order belongs the _Buttercup_ (_Ranunculus bulbosus_),

whose bulbous root procured for it from our forefathers the name of

"St Anthony's turnip."

If the good saint ever partook of buttercup-corms, we do not envy

him his sensations; when boiled, they disorder the stomach, and if

eaten raw, act as an emetic.