172 PROSERPINA. 



these names are persisted in, the Greek botanists, 

 to return the compliment, will of course call 

 Endogens 'IvcreiS/Jopi'iSes, and Exogens "OirrcreiS- 

 jSopviSes- In the Oxford school, they will be called 

 simply Inlaid and Outlaid. 



3. You see that if the outside leaves are to grow 

 last, they may conveniently grow two at a time ; 

 which they accordingly do, and exogens always 

 start with two little leaves from their roots, and 

 may therefore conveniently be called two-leaved ; 

 which, if you please, we will for our parts call 

 them. The botanists call them ' two-suckered,' and 

 can't be content to call them that in English ; but 

 drag in a long Greek word, meaning the fleshy sucker 

 of the sea-devil, — ' cotyledon,' which, however, I find 

 is practically getting shortened into ' cot,' and that 

 they will have to end by calling endogens, mono- 

 cots, and exogens, bicots. I mean steadily to call 

 them one-leaved and two-leaved, for this further 

 reason, that they differ not merely in the single or 

 dual springing of first leaves from the seed ; but in 

 the distinctly single or dual arrangement of leaves 

 afterwards on the stem ; so that, through all the 

 complexity obtained by alternate and spiral placing, 

 every bicot or two-leaved flower or tree is in reality 

 composed of dual groups of leaves, separated by a 

 given length of stem ; as, most characteristically in 



