THE FLOWER. 53 



10. A pure cup, you remember it is ; that much at least 

 you cannot but remember, of poppy-form among the corn- 

 fields ; and it is best, in beginning, to think of every flower as 

 essentially a cup. There are flat ones, but you will find that 

 most of these are really groups of flowers, not single blos- 

 soms ; and there are out-of-the-way and quaint ones, very dif- 

 ficult to define as of any shape ; but even these have a cup to 

 begin with, deep down in them. You had better take the 

 idea of a cup or vase, as the first, simplest, and most general 

 form of true flower. 



The botanists call it a corolla, which means a garland, or a 

 kind of crown ; and the word is a very good one, because it 

 indicates that the flower-cup is made, as our clay cups are, on 

 a potter's wheel ; that it is essentially a revolute form a whirl 

 or (botanically) ' whorl ' of leaves ; in reality successive round 

 the base of the urn they form. 



11. Perhaps, however, you think poppies in general are not 

 much like cups. But the flower in my hand is a poverty- 



stricken poppy, I was going to write, poverty-strengthened 



poppy, I mean. On richer ground, it would have gushed 

 into flaunting breadth of untenable purple flapped its incon- 

 sistent scarlet vaguely to the wind dropped the pride of its 

 petals over my hand in an hour after I gathered it. But this 

 little rough-bred thing, a Campagna pony of a poppy, is as 

 bright and strong to-day as yesterday. So that I can see ex- 

 actly where the leaves join or lap over each other ; and when 

 I look down into the cup, find it to be composed of iour leaves 

 altogether, two smaller, set within two larger. 



12. Thus far (and somewhat farther) I had written in 

 Rome ; but now, putting my work together in Oxford, a sud- 

 den doubt troubles me, whether all poppies have two petals 

 smaller then the other two. Whereupon I take down an ex- 

 cellent little school-book on botany the best I've yet found, 

 thinking to be told quickly ; and I find a great deal about 

 opium ; and, apropos of opium, that the juice of common cel- 

 andine is of a bright orange colour ; and I pause for a bewil- 

 dered five minutes, wondering if a celandine is a poppy, and 

 how many petals it has : going ou again because I must, 



