FIG. 18. 



IX. OUTSIDE AND IN. 155 



leaves from their roots, and may therefore con- 

 veniently be called two-leaved ; which, if you 

 please, we will for our parts call them. The 

 botanists call them ; two-suckered,' and can't be 

 content to call them that in English; but drag 

 in a long Greek word, meaning the fleshy sucker 

 of the sea-devil, ' cotyledon,' which, however, 

 I find is practically getting shortened into l cot,' 

 and that they will have to end by calling en- 

 dogeus, monocots, and exogens, bicots. I mean 

 steadily to call them one-leaved and two-leaved, 

 for this further reason, that they diifer not merely 

 in the single or dual springing of fi^st leaves 

 from the seed; but in the distinctly single or 

 dual arrangement of leaves afterwards on the 

 stem ; so that, through all the complexity ob- 

 tained by alternate and spiral placing, every bicot 

 or two-leaved flower or tree is in reality com- 

 posed of dual groups of leaves, separated by a 

 given length of stem; as, most characteristically 

 in this pure mountain type of the Ragged Robin 

 (Clarissa laciniosa), Fig. 18 ; and 

 compare A. and B, Line-study II. ; 

 while, on the other hand, the mono- 

 >cot plants are by close analysis, I 

 think, always resolvable into suc- 

 cessively climbing leaves, sessile on 

 one another, and sending their roots, FIG. 19. 



