IV. THE FLOWER. 75 



I really don't know what it consists essentially 

 of. For some flowers have bracts, and stalks„ 

 and toruses, and calices, and corollas, and discs, 

 and stamens, and pistils, and ever so many odds 

 and ends of things besides, of no use at all, 

 seemingly; and others have no bracts, and no 

 stalks, and no toruses, and no calices, and no 

 corollas, and nothing recognizable for stamens or 

 pistils, — only, when they come to be reduced to 

 this kind of poverty, one doesn't call them flowers ; 

 they get together in knots, and one calls them 

 catkins, or the like, or forgets their existence 

 altogether ; — I haven't the least idea, for instance, 

 myself, what an oak blossom is like ; only I know 

 its bracts get together and make a cup of them- 

 selves afterwards, which the Italians call, as they 

 do the dome of St. Peter's, ' cupola ' ; and that it is 

 a great pity, for their own sake as well as the 

 world's, that they were not content with their ilex 

 cupolas, which were made to hold something, but 

 took to building these big ones upside-down, which 

 hold nothing — less than nothing, — large extinguishers 

 of the flame of Catholic religion. And for farther 

 embarrassment, a flower not only is without essen- 

 tial consistence of a given number of parts, but 

 it rarely consists, alone, of itself. One talks of a 

 hyacinth as of a flower ; but a hyacinth is any 



