126 PROSERPINA. 



part that each plant has to play among the vast vegetable 

 population of our globe. Plants which need for their 

 life a pure and often-renewed air, are borne by a straight 

 tige, robust and tall. When they have need only of a 

 moist air, more condensed, and more rarely renewed, 

 when they have to creep on the ground or glide in thick- 

 ets, the tiges are long, flexible, and dragging. If they 

 are to float in the air, sustaining themselves on more ro- 

 bust vegetables, they are provided with flexible, slender, 

 and supple tiges." 



6. Yes; but in that last sentence he loses lio"Jd*of his 

 main idea, and to me the important one, namely, the 

 connexion of the form of stem with the quality of the 

 air it requires. And that idea itself is at present vague, 

 though most valuable, to me. A strawberry creeps, with 

 a flexible stem, but requires certainly no less pure air 

 than a wood-fungus, which stands up straight. And in 

 our own hedges and woods, are the wild rose and honey- 

 suckle signs of unwholesome air ? 



" And honeysuckle loved to crawl 

 Up the lone crags and ruined wall. 

 I deemed such nooks the sweetest shade 

 The sun in all his round surveyed." 



It seems to me, in the nooks most haunted by honeysuckle 

 in my own wood, that the reason for its twining is a very 

 feminine one, that it likes to twine ; and that all these 

 whys and wherefores resolve themselves at last into 



