72 PEOSEKPINA. 



12. Thus far (and somewhat farther) I had written in 

 Rome ; but now, putting my work together in Oxford, a 

 sudden doubt troubles me, whether all poppies have two 

 petals smaller than the other two. Whereupon I take 

 down an excellent little school-book on botany the best 

 I've yet found, thinking to be told quickly ; and I find a 

 great deal about opium ; and, apropos of opium, that the 

 juice of common celandine is of a bright orange colour; 

 and I pause for a bewildered five minutes, wondering if 

 a celandine is a poppy, and how many petals it has : going 

 on again because I must, without making up my mind, 

 on either question I am told to " observe the floral recep- 

 tacle of the Calif ornian genus Eschscholtzia." Now I 

 r can't observe anything of the sort, and I don't want to ; . 

 and I wish California and all that's in it were at -the deep- 

 est bottom of the Pacific. Next I am told to compare 

 the poppy and waterlily ; and I can't do that, neither 

 though I should like to ; and there's the end of the ar- 

 ticle ; and it never tells me whether one pair of petals is 

 always smaller than the other, or not. Only I see it says 

 the corolla has four petals. Perhaps a celandine may be 

 a double poppy, and have eight, I know they're tiresome 

 irregular things, and I mustn't be stopped by them ; ~* at 



* Just in time, finding a heap of gold under an oak tree some thou- 

 sand years old, near Arundel, I've made them out: Eight, divided by 

 three ; that is to say, three couples of petals, with two odd little onea 

 inserted for form's sake. No wonder I couldn't decipher them by 

 memory. 



