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THE LIME. 



No tree indigenous to Great Britain presents so large a variety of 

 pleasing features as the Lime. Less robust than the oak and chesnut ; 

 inferior in stature to the "elm and fir, and in umbrageousness surpassed 

 by the beech, in its own intrinsic and peculiar qualities this beautiful 

 production of nature is nevertheless on a par with all, and among trees 

 is the analogue of that happy condition of body which the Greeks 

 denominated eva-apKoy, neither fat nor lean, but gracefully intermediate. 

 In the Lime, too, we are reminded of that other elegant intellectual habit 

 of the ancient dwellers by the blue JSgean, which led them to apply to 

 massive and vigorous plants the epithet of "male," and to delicate and 

 tender ones of similar profile and physiognomy, the corresponding and 

 very expressive one of "female," The Greeks had but the faintest idea 

 of the existence in plants of sex ; the clear knowledge of this most 

 wonderful truth belongs indeed to the last two centuries. They had 

 sufficient appreciation, nevertheless, of the universal dualism of nature, 

 to speak of things in a certain vague and general manner as masculine 

 and feminine ; and hence to this day, and every day, we have in use 

 the pretty names "Filix-mas" and "Filix-foernina," or shield-fern and 

 lady-fern. Whatever learned nomenclators may choose to call them, 

 Aspidium or Lastraa, Asplenium or Athyrium, these beloved old names 

 will never die, but live for ever, like the green plumes to which they 

 are bound. Filix-mas in the sweet recesses of the woodland, making 

 great circles of curving leaves that remind us of the war-feathers upon 

 the head of an Indian chief; Filix-temina by the side of the waterfall, 

 and where streams bubble and gurgle, and the forget-me-nots put on 

 their turquoises, what thousands of pleasing moments have these two 

 admirable plants supplied to man and woman, after whom they were 

 baptised ; what thousands, too, of happy moments will they yet provide ; 

 and though mostly through their own original and immortal spell 

 that harpooning power which such excellent beauty as theirs always 

 possesses not alone will it be through this, but mediately through 

 their names, which attract and give life where "brake" and "spleen- 

 wort" are feeble and voiceless. 



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