42 PROSERPINA. 



singularly happy leaves. From these two roots come 

 foglio, feuille, feuillage, and fleur ; blume, blossom, and 

 bloom ; our foliage, and the borrowed foil, and the con- 

 nected technical groups of words in architecture and the 

 sciences. 



4. This thin film, I said. That is the essential charac- 

 ter of a leaf ; to be thin, widely spread out in proportion 

 to its mass. It is the opening of the substance of the earth 

 to the air, which is the giver of life. The Greeks called 

 it, therefore, not only the born or blooming thing, but the 

 spread or expanded thing " TreraXov." Pindar calls the 

 beginnings of quarrel, "petals of quarrel." Recollect, 

 therefore, this form, Petalos ; and connect it with Petasos, 

 the expanded cap of Mercury. For one great use of both 

 is to give shade. The root of all these words is said to be 

 TIET (Pet), which may easily be remembered in Greek, 

 as it sometimes occurs in no unpleasant sense in English. 



5. But the word ' petalos ' is connected in Greek with 

 another word, meaning, to fly, so that you may think of 

 a bird as spreading its petals to the wind ; and with an- 

 other, signifying Fate in its pursuing flight, the overtaking 

 thing, or overflying Fate. Finally, there is another Greek 

 word meaning < wide,' ir\arv^ (platys) ; whence at last our 

 1 plate ' a thing made broad or extended but especially 

 made broad or ' flat ' out of the solid, as in a lump of clay 

 extended on the wheel, or a lump of metal extended by 

 the hammer. So the first we call Platter; the second 

 Plate, when of the precious metals. Then putting ~b for 



