VIII. THE STEM. 151 



of the office of the leafy cymba in carrying the 

 bud ; and make you thankful that the said leafy 

 vase is not of iron ; and is a ship of Life instead 

 of Death. 



11. Already, not once, nor twice, I have had to 

 use the word ' stem,' of the main round branch 

 from which both stalk and cymba spring. This 

 word you had better keep for all growing, or 

 advancing, shoots of trees, whether from the ground, 

 or from central trunks and branches. I regret 

 that the words multiply on us ; but each that I 

 permit myself to use has its own proper thought 

 or idea to express, as you will presently perceive ; 

 so that true knowledge multiplies with true words. 



1 2. The ' stem,' you are to say, then, when 

 you mean the advancing shoot, — which lengthens 

 annually, while a stalk ends every year in a blossom, 

 and a cymba in a leaf. A stem is essentially 

 round,* square, or regularly polygonal ; though, as 

 a cymba may become exceptionally round, a stem 

 may become exceptionally flat, or even mimic the 

 shape of a leaf. Indeed I should have liked to 

 write " a stem is essentially round, and construct- 

 ively, on occasion, square," — but it would have 

 been too grand. The fact is, however, that a stem 

 is really a roundly minded thing, throwing off its 



* I use ' round ' rather than ' cylindrical,' for simplicity's sake. 



