94 PROSERPINA. 



impossible without careful profiles of each petal laterally 

 and across it. Which I may not find time to draw for any 

 poppy whatever, because they none of them have well- 

 becomingness enough to make it worth my while, being 

 all more or less weedy, and ungracious, and mingled of 

 good and evil. Whereupon rises before me, ghostly and 

 untenable, the general question, ' What is a weed ? ' and, 

 impatient for answer, the particular question, What is a 

 poppy ? I choose, for instance, to call this yellow flower 

 a poppy, instead of a " likeness to poppy," which the bot- 

 anists meant to call it, in their bad Greek. I choose also 

 to call a poppy, what the botanists have called " glaucous 

 thing," (glaucium). But where and when shall I stop 

 calling things poppies ? This is certainly a question to be 

 settled at once, with others appertaining to it. 



7. In the first place, then, I mean to call every flower 

 either one thing or another, and not an * aceous ' thing, 

 only half something or half another. I mean to call this 

 plant now in my hand, either a poppy or not a poppy ; 

 but not poppaceous. And this other, either a thistle 

 or not a thistle ; but not thistlaceous. And this other, either 

 a nettle or not a nettle ; but not nettlaceous. I know it will 

 be very difficult to carry out this principle when tribes 

 of plants are much extended and varied in type : I shall 

 persist in it, however, as far as possible ; and when plants 

 change so much that one cannot with any conscience call 

 them by their family name any more, I shall put them 

 aside somewhere among families of poor relations, nol 



