186 PROSERPINA. 



shown a lily, and told that he is to call every flower like 

 that, ' Liliaceous ' ; so far well ; but he is next shown 

 a daisy, and is not at all allowed to call every flower like 

 that, ' Daisaceous, ' but he must call it, like the fifth 

 order of architecture, c Composite ' ; and being next 

 shown a pink, he is not allowed to call other pinks 

 ' Pinkaceous, ' but ' Nut-leafed ' ; and being next shown 

 a pease-blossom, he is not allowed to call other pease- 

 blossoms ' Peasaceous, ' but, in a brilliant burst of botan- 

 ical imagination, he is incited to call it by two names 

 instead of one, ' Butterfly -aceous ' from its flower, and 

 4 Pod-aceous ' from its seed ; the inconsistency of the 

 terms thus enforced upon him being perfected in their 

 inaccuracy, for a daisy is not one whit more composite 

 than Queen of the meadow, or Jura Jacinth ; * and 

 ' legumen ' is not Latin for apod, but ' siliqua,' so that 

 no good scholar could remember Virgil's i siliqua quas- 

 sante legumen/ without overthrowing all his Pisan 

 nomenclature. 



17. Farther. If we ground oul* names of the higner 

 orders on the distinctive characters of form in plants, 

 these are so many, and so subtle, that we are at once in- 

 volved in more investigations than a young learner has 

 ever time to follow successfully, and they must be at all 

 times liable to dislocations and rearrangements on the 

 discovery of any new link in the infinitely entangled 



* " Jacinthus Jurae," changed from " Hyacinthus Comosus." 



