PROSERPINA. 



5. Pinguieula Minima : Least Butterwort; in D. 1021 

 called Villosa, the scape of it being hairy. I have not 



yet got rid of this absurd word ' scape,' 

 meaning, in botanist's Latin, the flower-stalk 

 of a flower growing out of a cluster of leaves 

 on the ground. It is a bad corruption of 

 'sceptre,' and especially false and absurd, be- 

 cause a true sceptre is necessarily branched.* 

 In s Proserpina,' when it is spoken of dis- 

 tinctively, it is called 'virgula' (see vol. i., 

 pp. 146, 147, 151, 152). The hairs on the vir- 

 gula are in this instance so minute, that even 

 with a lens I cannot see them in the Danish 

 plate : of which Fig. 3 is a rough transla- 

 tion into woodcut, to show the grace and 

 FIG. III. mien of the little thing. The trine leaf 

 cluster is characteristic, and the folding up of the leaf 

 edges. The flower, in the Danish plate, full purple, 

 Abundant in east of Finmar'k (Finland?), but always 

 growing in marsh moss, (Sphagnum palustre). 



6. I call it ' Minima ' only, as the least of the five here 

 named ; without putting forward any claim for it to be 

 the smallest pinguicula that ever was or will be. In 

 such sense only, the epithets minima or maxima are to, 

 be understood when used in 'Proserpina': and so also, 



More accurately, shows the pruned roots of branches, 



rojurj}' kv ope&fa XeX.ontRy. The pruning is the mythic 

 expression of the subduing of passion by rectorial law. 



