26 PROSERPINA. 



outside, long in the middle. Stop, though ; is that 

 so ? I am not even sure of that ; perhaps they are 

 built over a little dome of decayed moss below.* I 

 must find out how every filament grows, separately 

 — from root to cap, through the spirally set leaves. 

 And meanwhile I don't know very clearly so much 

 as what a root is— or what a leaf is. Before puzzling 

 myself any further in examination either of moss 

 or any other grander vegetable, I had better define 

 these primal forms of all vegetation, as well as I 

 can — or rather begin the definition of them, for future 

 completion and correction. For, as my reader must 

 already sufficiently perceive, this book is literally 

 to be one of studies — not of statements. Some one 

 said of me once, very shrewdly, When he wants to 

 work out a subject, he writes a book on it. That 

 is a very true saying in the main, — I work down or 

 up to my mark, and let the reader see process and 

 progress, not caring to conceal them. But this 

 book will be nothing but process. I don't mean 



* Lucca, Aug. gth, 1874. — I have left this passage as originally 

 written, but I believe the dome is of accumulated earth. Bringing 

 home, here, evening after evening, heaps of all kinds of mosses from 

 the hills among which the Archbishop Ruggieri was hunting the 

 wolf and her whelps in Ugolino's dream, I am more and more 

 struck, every day, with their special function as earth-gatherers, and 

 with the enormous importance to their own brightness, and to our 

 service, of that dark and degraded state of the inferior leaves. And 

 it fastens itself in my mind mainly as their distinctive character, that 



