FLOWERS AND FOLKS. 225 



cherries, grapes, 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, aesthetic and gastronomic, 

 were unequally developed. We were in the 

 case 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- 

 cates of any kind, the world over. It is 

 part of the very unity of the world, this 

 universally diffused diversity. 



