258 CHAPTER XXXV. 



with pride ; the drooping Violet is a symbol of 

 humility ; the blazing poppy threatens anger ; the 

 Myosote, uncurling its blue flowers by the river side, 

 promises the most devoted affection ; and so forth. 

 This " Language of Flowers " is almost the only 

 one not yet included in our school curriculum. We 

 cram our pupils with languages, living and dead, 

 classical and modern, Aryan and Semitic, poly- 

 synthetic, agglutinative, and inflectional. But the 

 " Language of Flowers " does not count for pro- 

 motion to a higher form, nor does it carry marks in 

 any competitive examination. The British parent is 

 still of the same opinion as that Bourgeois of 

 Alphonse Karr's, "who does not wish to take his 

 son's mind off his studies by having him taught 

 Botany." Yet there is indeed a "Language of 

 Flowers," and those alone who learn it can interpret 

 the whisperings of the springtime, can translate the 

 great epics of the fields, and read the lessons of the 

 changing seasons. 



The " Language of Flowers " has no Grammar 

 or Gradus, no Dictionary or Delectus, no wearisome 

 rules of Syntax or of Prosody : it has not yet taken 

 its rank among the instruments of educational torture. 

 But the time is at hand : those queer little books with 

 a gilt garland on the cover and a coloured bouquet 

 for a frontispiece are doomed ; no one will buy 

 them now, for the scientific wiseacres have decreed 

 (at Cambridge for instance) that children must begin 

 Botany by the study of Chemistry, and that an urchin 

 who does not know a daisy from a buttercup must 

 learn vegetable histology with the aid of a compound 

 microscope. 



