XT. GENEALOGY. 197 



' issa, ' not without honour to the greatest of our English 

 moral story-tellers, is added for the practical reason, 

 that I think the sound will fasten in the minds of chil- 

 dren the essential characteristic of the race, the cutting of 

 the outer edge of the petal as if with scissors. 



vii. VESTALES. I allow this Latin form, because 

 Hestiades would have been confused with Heliades. 

 The order is named l of the hearth, ' from its manifold 

 domestic use, and modest blossoming. 



vm. CYTHERIDES. Dedicate to Venus, but in all 

 purity and peace of thought. Giulietta, for the coarse, 

 and more than ordinarily false, Polygala. 



ix. HELIADES. The sun - flowers.* In English, 



Alcestid, in honour to Chaucer and the Daisy. 



x. DELPHIDES.- Sacred to Apollo. Graiiata, changed 

 from Punica, in honor to Granada and the Moors. 



xi. HESPERIDES. Already a name given to the order. 



of the limb ; and in Mica, the minute and scarcely visible flowers 

 have simple and far separate petals. The confusion of these four 

 great natural races under the vulgar or accidental botanical names of 

 spittle-plant, shore-plant, sand plant, etc., has become entirely intol- 

 erable by any rational student ; but the names ' Scintilla,' substituted 

 for Stellaria, and ' Mica' for the utterly ridiculous and probably 

 untrue Sagina, connect themselves naturally with Lychnis, in expres- 

 sion of the luminous power of the white and sparkling blossoms. 



* Clytia will include all the true sun-flowers, and Falconia the 

 hawkweeds ; but I have not yet completed the analysis of this vast 

 and complex order, so as to determine the limits of Margarita and 

 Alcestis. 



