40 PROSERPINA. 



to exhibit it until the time comes for fruitful display. 

 But they must not, in after-life, imitate the spend- 

 thrift vegetable, and blossom only in the strength of 

 what they learned long ago ; else they soon come to 

 contemptible end. Wise people live like laurels and 

 cedars, and go on mining in the earth, while they 

 adorn and embalm the air. 



14. Secondly, Refuges. As flowers growing on 

 trees have to live for some time, when they are 

 young, in their buds, so some flowers growing on 

 the ground have to live for a while, when they are 

 young, in what we call their roots. These are 

 mostly among the Drosidae * and other humble 

 tribes, loving the ground ; and, in their babyhood, 

 liking to live quite down in it. A baby crocus 

 has literally its own little dome — domus, or duomo 

 — within which in early spring it lives a delicate 

 convent life of its own, quite free from all worldly 

 care and dangers, exceedingly ignorant of things in 

 general, but itself brightly golden and perfectly formed 

 before it is brought out. These subterranean palaces 

 and vaulted cloisters, which we call bulbs, are no 

 more roots than the blade of grass is a root, in which 

 the ear of corn forms before it shoots up. 



* Drosidae, in our school nomenclature, is the general name, including 

 the four great tribes, iris, asphodel, amaryllis, and lily. See reason for 

 this name given in the 'Queen of the Air,' Section II. 



