66 PEOSEEPINA. 



Sunday. The falling fire of the rainbow, with the order 

 of its zones, and the gladness of its covenant, you may eat 

 of it, like Esdras ; but you feed upon it only that you may 

 see it. Do you think that flowers were born to nourish 

 the blind ? 



Fasten well in your mind, then, the conception of order, 

 and purity, as the essence of the flower's being, no less 

 than of the crystal's. A ruby is not made bright to scatter 

 round it child-rubies ; nor a flower, but in collateral and 

 added honour, to give birth to other flowers. 



Two main facts, then, you have to study in every flower: 

 the symmetry or order of it, and the perfection of its 

 substance ; first, the manner in which the leaves are 

 placed for beauty of form ; then the spinning and weav- 

 ing and blanching of their tissue, for the reception of 

 purest colour, or refining to richest surface. 



4 First, the order : the proportion, and answering to 

 each other, of the parts ; for the study of which it be- 

 comes necessary to know what its parts are ; and that a 



flower consists essentially of Well, I really don't 



know what it consists essentially of. For some flowers 

 have bracts, and stalks, and toruses, and calices, and co- 

 rollas, and discs, and stamens, and pistils, and ever so 

 many odds and ends of things besides, of no nse at all, 

 seemingly ; arid others have no bracts, and no stalks, and 

 no toruses, and no calices, and no corollas, and nothing 

 recognizable for stamens or pistils, only, when they come 

 to be reduced to this kind of poverty, one doesn't call 



