14:2 PROSERPINA. 



cance of what I so find, better than perhaps even Mr. 

 Smith himself could. 



18. In the 586th page of Mr. Smith's volume, you have 

 it written that ' Calvus,' bald-head, was the name of a 

 family of the Licinia gens; that the man of whom we 

 hear earliest, as so named, was the first plebeian elected 

 to military tribuneship in B.C. 400 ; and that the fourth of 

 whom we hear, was surnamed 4 Stolo,' because he was so 

 particular in pruning away the Stolons (stolones), or use 

 less young shoots, of his vines. 



We must keep this word ' stolon,' therefore, for these 

 young suckers springing from an old root. Its derivation 

 is uncertain ; but the main idea meant by it is one of use 

 lessness, sprouting without occasion or fruit ; and the 

 words 'stolidus' and ' stolid ' are really its derivatives, 

 though we have lost their sense in English by partly con- 

 fusing them with ' solid ' which they have nothing to dc 

 with. A ' stolid ' person is essentially a ' useless sucker ' 

 of society ; frequently very leafy and graceful, but with 

 no good in him. 



19. Nevertheless, 1 won't allow our vegetable 'stolons* 

 to be despised. Some of quite the most beautiful forms 

 of leafage belong to them ; even the foliage of the olive 

 itself is never seen to the same perfection on the upper 

 branches as in the young ground-rods in which the dual 

 groups of leaves crowd themselves in their haste into clus- 

 ters of three. 



But, for our point of Latin history, remember always 



