96 PROSERPINA. 



ther out with his help, I think this definition might stand. 

 "A poppy is a flower which has either four or six petals, 

 and two or more treasuries, united into one ; containing 

 a milky, stupifying fluid in its stalks and leaves, and 

 always throwing away its calyx when it blossoms." 



And indeed, every flower which unites all these charac- 

 ters, we shall, in the Oxford schools, call ' poppy,' and 

 ' Papaver ; ' but when I get fairly into work, I hope to fix 

 my definitions into more strict terms. For I wish all my 

 pupils to form the habit of asking, of every plant, these 

 following four questions^ in order, corresponding to the 

 subject of these opening chapters, namely, " What root 

 has it ? what leaf ? what flower ? and what stem ? " And, 

 in this definition of poppies, nothing whatever is said 

 about the root ; and not only I don't know myself what a 

 poppy root is like, but in all Sowerby's poppy section, I 

 find no word whatever about that matter. 



10. Leaving, however, for the present, the root unthought 

 of, and contenting myself with Dr. Lindley's characteris- 

 tics, I shall place, at the head of the whole group, our 

 common European wild poppy, Papaver Rhoeas, and, 

 with this, arrange the nine following other flowers thus, 

 opposite. 



I must be content at present with determining the Latin 

 names for the Oxford schools ; the English ones I shall 

 give as they chance to occur to me, in Gerarde and the 

 classical poets who wrote before the English revolution. 

 When no satisfactory name is to be found, I must try to 



