I. VIOLA. 5 



form are produced which can be seen in any inferior 

 nrirunisin : but when the irregularity becomes fixed, and 

 the newer is always to the same extent distorted, what- 

 ever its position in the cluster, the plant is to be rightly 

 thought of as reduced to a lower rank in creation. 



7. It is to be observed, also, that these inferior forms 

 of flower have always the appearance of being produced 

 by .-nine kind of mischief blight, bite, or ill-breeding; 

 they never suggest the idea of improving themselves, now, 

 into anything better ; one is only afraid of their tearing 

 or puffing themselves into something worse. Xay, even 

 the quite natural and simple conditions of inferior vege- 

 table do not in the least suggest, to the uribitten or un- 

 blighted human intellect, the notion of development into 

 anything other than their like : one does not expect a 

 mushroom to translate itself into a pineapple, nor a 

 betony to moralize itself into a lily, nor a snapdragon to 

 soften himself into a lilac. 



8. It is very possible, indeed, that the recent phrenzy 

 fur the investigation of digestive and reproductive oper- 

 ations in plants may by tin's time have furnished the 

 microscopic malice of botanists with providentially dis- 

 gusting reasons, or demoniacally nasty necessities, for 

 every possible spur, spike, jag, sting, rent, blotch, flaw, 

 freckle, filth, or venom, which can be detected in the 

 construction, or distilled from the dissolution, of vegeta- 

 ble organism. But with these obscene processes and 

 prurient apparitions the gentle and happy scholar of 



