360 Mr. Raskin on Tree Twigs, [April 19, 



by observing the precision of their treatment of leaf curvature. The 

 leaf-painting round the head of Ariosto by Titian, in the National 

 Gallery, might be instanced. 



The leaf thus differed from the flower in forming and protecting 

 behind it, not only the bud in which was the germ of a new shoot like 

 itself, but a piece of permanent work ; and produced substance, by 

 which every following shoot would be placed under different circum- 

 stances from its predecessor. Every leaf laboured to solidify this 

 substance during its own life ; but the seed left by the flower matured 

 only as the flower perished. 



This difference in the action and endurance of the flower and leaf, 

 had been applied by nearly all great nations as the type of the variously 

 active or productive states of life, among individuals or commonwealths. 

 Chaucer's poem of the " Flower and Leaf" is the most definite expres- 

 sion of the mediaeval feeling in this respect, while the fables of the rape 

 of Proserpine and of Apollo and Daphne embody that of the Greeks. 

 There is no Greek goddess corresponding to the Flora of the Romans. 

 Their Flora is Persephone, '' the bringer of death." She plays for a 

 little while in the Sicilian fields, gathering flowers ; then, snatched away 

 by Pluto, receives her chief power as she vanishes from our sight, and is 

 crowned in the grave. Daphne, on the other hand, is the daughter of 

 one of the great Arcadian river gods, and of the earth ; she is the type 

 of the river mist filling the rocky vales of Arcadia ; the sun, pursuing 

 this mist from dell to dell, is Apollo pursuing Daphne ; — where the 

 mist is protected from his rays by the rock shadows, the laurel and 

 ether richest vegetation spring by the river-sides, so that the laurel-leaf 

 becomes the type, in the Greek mind, of the beneficent ministry and 

 vitality of the rivers and the earth, under the beams of sunshine ; and 

 therefore it is chosen to form the signet-crown of highest honour for 

 gods or men ; honour for work born of the strength and dew of the 

 earth, and informed by the central light of heaven ;— work living, 

 perennial, and beneficent. 



[J. R.] 



WEEKLY EVENING MEETING, 



Friday, April 26, 1861. 



The Duke op Northumberland. K.G. F.R.S. President, 

 in the Chair. 



Professor Owen, F.R.S., &c. 



FULLEEIAN PBOFESSOB OF PHTSIOLOGT, R.I. 



On the Scope and Appliances of a National Museum of Natural 



History. 



