THE FLOWER. 51 



number. They all grow together as close as they can, and on 

 one side of the supporting branch only. The natural effect 

 would be to bend the branch down ; but the branch won't 

 have that, and so leans back to carry them. Now you see the 

 use of drawing the profile in the middle figure : it shows you 

 the exactly balanced setting of the group, not drooping, nor 

 erect ; but with a disposition to droop, tossed up by the 

 leaning back of the stem. Then, growing as near as they can 

 to each other, those in the middle get squeezed. Here is an- 

 other quite special character. Some flowers don't like being 

 squeezed at all (fancy a squeezed convolvulus !) ; but these 

 heather bells like it, and look all the prettier for it, not the 

 squeezed ones exactly, by themselves, but the cluster alto- 

 gether, by their patience. 



Then also the outside ones get pushed into a sort of star- 

 shape, and in front show the colour of all their sides, and at 

 the back the rich green cluster of sharp leaves that hold them ; 

 all this order being as essential to the plant as any of the 

 more formal structures of the bell itself. 



6. But the bog-heath has usually only one cluster of flowers 

 to arrange on each branch. Take a spray of ling (Frontis- 

 piece), and you will find that the richest piece of Gothic spire- 

 sculpture would be dull and graceless beside the grouping of 

 the floral masses in their various life. But it is difficult to 

 give the accuracy of attention necessary to see their beauty 

 without drawing them ; and still more difficult to draw them 

 in any approximation to the truth before they change. This 

 is indeed the fatallest obstacle to all good botanical work. 

 Flowers, or leaves, and especially the last, can only be 

 rightly drawn as they grow. And even then, in their loveliest 

 spring action, they grow as you draw them, and will not stay 

 quite the same creatures for half an hour. 



7. I said in my inaugural lectures at Oxford, 107, that 

 real botany is not so much the description of plants as their 

 biography. Without entering at all into the history of its 

 fruitage, the life and death of the blossom itself is always an 

 eventful romance, which must be completely told, if well. 

 The grouping given to the various states of form between bud 



