86 THE LIME. 



menclators may choose to call them, Aspidium or 

 Lastraea, 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- 

 fosmina 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 baptized ; 

 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 pos- 

 sesses not alone will it be through this, but me- 

 diately through their names, which attract and give 

 life where " brake " and " spleen-wort " are feeble 

 and voiceless. 



In the Lime, we say, the thought of this fine old 

 habit of the classical ages is awakened, and not less 

 forcibly than that of the felicitous Greek adjective, 

 for the lime is one especially of the feminine class of 

 trees. The oak, the elm, the chestnut, the beech, 

 are masculine in contour and quality ; the lime, the 

 birch, the ash, are, like the acacia, no less em- 

 phatically of feminine look and attributes. Wanting 

 the light tresses of the acacia, the most feminine of 



