68 PROSERPINA. 



note that while the corolla itself is one of the most con- 

 stant in form, and so distinct from all other blossoms 

 that it may be always known at a glance ; the leaves and 

 habit of growth vary so greatly in families of different 

 climates, and those born for special situations, moist or 

 dry, and the like, that it is quite impossible to character- 

 ize Veronic, or Veronique, vegetation in general terms. 

 One can say, comfortably, of a strawberry, that it is a 

 creeper, without expecting at the next moment to see a 

 steeple of strawberry blossoms rise to contradict us ; we 

 can venture to say of a foxglove that it grows in a spire, 

 without any danger of finding, farther on, a carpet of 

 prostrate and entangling digitalis; and we may pro- 

 nounce of a buttercup that it grows mostly in meadows, 

 without fear of finding ourselves, at the edge of the next 

 thicket, under the shadow of a buttercup-bush growing 

 into valuable timber. But the Veronica reclines with 

 the lowly,* upon occasion, arid aspires, with the proud ; 

 is here the pleased companion of the ground-ivies, and 

 there the unrebuked rival of the larkspurs : on the rocks 

 of Coniston it effaces itself almost into the film of a 

 lichen ; it pierces the snows of Iceland with the gentian : 

 and in the Falkland Islands is a white-blossomed ever- 

 green, of which botanists are in dispute whether it be 

 Veronica or Olive. 



* See distinction betwfeon recumbent and rampant herbs, below, 

 under ' Veronica Agrestis,' p. 72. 



