CHAPTER VI. 



MONACHA. 



1. IT is not a little vexing to me, in looking over the 

 very little I have got done of my planned Systema 

 Proserpinse, to discover a grave mistake in the specifica- 

 tions of Veronica. It is Veronica chamsedrys, not offi- 

 cinalis, which is our proper English Speedwell, and 

 Welsh Fluellen ; and all the eighth paragraph, p. 74, 

 properly applies to that. Veronica officinalis is an ex- 

 tremely small flower rising on vertical stems out of re- 

 cumbent leaves; and the drawing of it in the Flora 

 Danica, which I mistook for a stunted northern state, is 

 quite true of the English species,* except that it does 

 not express the recumbent action of the leaves. The 

 proper representation of ground-leafage has never yet 

 been attempted in any botanical work whatever, and as, 

 in recumbent plants, their grouping and action can only 

 be seen from above, the plates of them should always 

 have a dark and rugged background, not only to indicate 

 the position of the eye, but to relieve the forms of the 



* The plate of Chamaedrys, D. 448, is also quite right, and not 

 1 too tall and weedlike,' as I have called it at p. 72. 



