202 PROSERPINA. 



colours ; and are distinguished from all other 

 flowers by twisting, not only their stalks, but 

 one of their petals, not once and a half only, 

 but two or three times round, and putting it far 

 out at the same time, as a foul jester would put 

 out his tongue : while also the singular power of 

 grotesque mimicry, which, though strong also in 

 the other groups of their race, seems in the others 

 more or less playful, is, in these, definitely degraded, 

 and, in aspect, malicious. 



*io. Now I find the Latin name ' Satyrium ' 

 attached already to one sort of these flowers ; 

 and we cannot possibly have a better one for 

 all of them. It is true that, in its first Greek 

 form, Dioscorides attaches it to a white, not a 

 livid, flower ; and I dare say there are some white 

 ones of the breed : but, in its full sense, the term 

 is exactly right for the entire group of ugly 

 blossoms of which the characteristic is the spiral 

 curve and protraction of their central petal : and 

 every other form of Satyric ugliness which I find 

 among the Ophryds, whatever its colour, will be 

 grouped with them. And I make them central, 

 because this humour runs through the whole order, 

 and is, indeed, their distinguishing sign. 



ii. Then the third group, living actually in the 

 air, and only holding fast by, without nourishing 



