20 PROSERPINA. 



Pulling out two or three separate plants, I find each 

 to consist mainly of a jointed stalk of a kind I have not 

 yet described, roughly, some two feet long altogether ; 

 (accurately, one 1 ft. 10J in. ; another, 1 ft. 10 in. ; an- 

 other, 1 ft. 9 in. but all these measures taken without 

 straightening, and therefore about an inch short of the 

 truth), and divided into seven or eight lengths by clumsy 

 joints where the mangled leafage is knotted on it ; but 

 broken a little out of the way at each joint, like a rheu- 

 matic elbow that won't come straight, or bend farther 

 and which is the most curious point of all in it it is 

 thickest in the middle, like a viper, and gets quite thin 

 to the root and thin towards the flower ; also the lengths 

 between the joints are longest in the middle : here I 

 give them in inches, from the root upwards, in a stalk 

 taken at random. 



But the thickness of the joints and length of terminal 

 flower stalk bring the total to two feet and about an inch 



