68 PROSERPINA. 



are said to be very deeply pinnately partite ; but drawn as 

 neither pinnate nor partite ! 



And this is your modern cheap science, in ten volumes. 

 Now I haven't a quiet moment to spare for drawing this morn- 

 ing ; but I merely give the main relations of the petals, A, and 

 blot in the wrinkles of one of the lower ones, B, Fig. 12 ; and 

 yet in this rude sketch you will feel, I believe, there is some- 

 thing specific which could not belong to any other flower. 

 But all proper description is impossible without careful pro- 

 files of each petal laterally and across it. Which I may not 

 find time to draw for any poppy whatever, because they none 



B 



FIG. 12. 



of them have well-becomingness enough to make it worth my 

 while, being all more or less weedy, and ungracious, and min- 

 gled of good and evil. "Whereupon rises before me, ghostly 

 and untenable, the general question, ' What is a weed ? ' and, 

 impatient for answer, the particular question, What is a poppy ? 

 I choose, for instance, to call this yellow flower a poppy, instead 

 of a " likeness to poppy," which the botanists meant to call it, 

 in their bad Greek. I choose also to call a poppy, what the 

 botanists have called " glaucous thing," (glaucium). But 

 where and when shall I stop calling things poppies ? This is 

 certainly a question to be settled at once, with others apper- 

 taining to it. 



