254: INDEX I. 



using sometimes the word ' milky ' of the white juices of 

 plants, I must beg the reader to remain unaffected in his 

 conviction that there is a vital difference between liquids 

 that coagulate into butter, or congeal into India-rubber. 

 Oil, when used simply, will always mean a vegetable 

 product : and when I have occasion to speak of petrole- 

 um, tallow, or blubber, I shall generally call these sub- 

 stances by their right names. 



There are also a certain number of vegetable materials 

 more or less prepared, secreted, or digested for us by an- 

 imals, such as wax, honey, silk, and cochineal. The 

 properties of these require more complex definitions, but 

 they have all very intelligible and well-established names. 

 ' Tea ' must be a general term for an extract of any plant 

 in boiling water : though when standing alone the word 

 will take its accepted Chinese meaning : and essence, the 

 general term for the condensed dew of a vegetable vapour, 

 which is with grace and fitness called the ' being ' of a 

 plant, because its properties are almost always character- 

 istic of the species ; and it is not, like leaf tissue or 

 wood fibre, approximately the same material in different 

 shapes ; but a separate element in each family of flowers, 

 of a mysterious, delightful, or dangerous influence, log- 

 ically inexplicable, chemically inconstructible, and 

 wholly, in dignity of nature, above all modes and faculties 

 of form. 



