IV. THE FLOWER. 87 



flower-cup has to it something of the relations 

 that a pestle has to a mortar ! Practically, however, 

 as this pestle has no pounding functions, I think 

 the word is misleading as well as ungraceful; and 

 that we may find a better one after looking a little 

 closer into the matter. For this pestle is divided 

 generally into three very distinct parts: there is a 

 storehouse at the bottom of it for the seeds of the 

 plant; above this, a shaft, often of considerable 

 length in deep cups, rising to the level of their 

 upper edge, or above it; and at the top of these 

 shafts an expanded crest. This shaft the botanists 

 call ' style,' from the Greek word for a pillar ; and 

 the crest of it — I do not know why — stigma, from 

 the Greek word for 'spot.' The storehouse for the 

 seeds they call the 'ovary,' from the Latin ovum, 

 an egg. So you have two-thirds of a Latin word, 

 (pistil) — awkwardly and disagreeably edged in be- 

 tween pestle and pistol — for the whole thing; you 

 have an English-Latin word (ovary) for the bottom 

 of it ; an English-Greek word (style) for the middle ; 

 and a pure Greek word (stigma) for the top. 



17. This is a great mess of language, and all the 

 worse that the words style and stigma have both 

 of them quite different senses in ordinary and 

 scholarly English from this forced botanical one. 

 And I will venture therefore, for my own pupils, to 



