80 PROSERPINA. 



10. A pure cup, you remember it is ; that much 

 at least you cannot but remember, of poppy- 

 form among the cornfields ; and it is best, in 

 beginning, to think of every flower as essentially a 

 cup. There are flat ones, but you will find that 

 most of these are really groups of flowers, not 

 single blossoms ; and there are out-of-the-way and 

 quaint ones, very difficult to define as of any 

 shape ; but even these have a cup to begin with, 

 deep down in them. You had better take the 

 idea of a cup or vase, as the first, simplest, and 

 most general form of true flower. 



The botanists call it a corolla, which means 

 a garland, or a kind of crown ; and the word is a 

 very good one, because it indicates that the flower- 

 cup is made, as our clay cups are, on a potter's 

 wheel ; that it is essentially a revolute form — a 

 whirl or (botanically) ' whorl ' of leaves ; in reality 

 successive round the base of the urn they form. 



ii. Perhaps, however, you think poppies in general 

 are not much like cups. But the flower in my hand 

 is a — poverty-stricken poppy, I was going to write, 



riov&rty-strengthened poppy, I mean. On richer 



ground, it would have gushed into flaunting breadth 

 of untenable purple — flapped its inconsistent scarlet 

 vaguely to the wind — dropped the pride of its 

 petals over my hand in an hour after I gathered 



