IV. THE FLOWER. 69 



sary to see their beauty without drawing them ; and still 

 more difficult to draw them in any approximation to the 

 truth before they change. This is indeed the fatallest 

 obstacle to all good botanical work. Flowers, or leaves, 

 and especially the last, can only be rightly drawn as 

 they grow. And even then, in their loveliest spring ac- 

 tion, they grow as you draw them, and will not stay quite 

 the same creatures for half an hour. 



7. I said in my inaugural lectures at Oxford, 107, 

 that real botany is not so much the description of plants 

 as their biography. Without entering at all into the 

 history of its fruitage, the life and death of the blossom 

 itself is always an eventful romance, which must be com- 

 pletely told, if well. The grouping given to the various 

 states of form between bud and flower is always the most 

 important part of the design of the plant; and in the 

 modes of its death are some of the most touching lessons, 

 or symbolisms, connected with its existence. The utter 

 loss and far scattered ruin of the cistus and wild rose, 

 the dishonoured and dark contortion of the convolvulus, 

 the pale wasting of the crimson heath of Apennine, are 

 strangely opposed by the quiet closing of the brown bells 

 of the ling, each making of themselves a little cross as 

 they die ; and so enduring into the days of winter. I 

 have drawn the faded beside the full branch, and know 

 not which is the more beautiful. 



8. This grouping, then, and way of treating each other 

 in their gathered company, is the first and most subtle 



