FLOWERS AND FOLKS. 225 
cherries, erapes, pig-nuts (a bad name for 
a good thing), shagbarks, acorns, and so 
forth — in which there was not this constant 
inequality among plants of the same species, 
perfectly well defined, and never lost sight 
of by us juvenile connoisseurs. If we failed 
to find the same true of other vines and 
bushes, which for our purposes bore blos- 
soms only, the explanation is not far to seek. 
Our perceptions, esthetic and gastronomic, 
were unequally developed. We were in the 
ease of the man to whom a poet is a poet, 
though he knows very well that there are 
cooks and cooks. 
It is this slight but everywhere present 
admixture of the personal quality — call it 
individuality, or what you will — that saves 
the world, animal and vegetable alike, from 
stagnation. Every bush, every bird, every 
man, together with its unmistakable and in- 
eradicable likeness to the parent stock, has 
received also a something, be it more or less, 
that distinguishes it from all its fellows. 
Let our observation be delicate enough, and 
we shall perceive that there are no dupli- 
eates of any kind, the world over. It is 
part of the very unity of the world, this 
universally diffused diversity. 
