THE STEM. 103 



count their love-lots by the Marguerite. I must be so ungra- 

 cious to my fair young readers, however, as to warn them 

 that this trial of their lovers is a very favourable one, for, in 

 niiie blossoms out of ten, the leaves of the Marguerite are 

 odd, so that, if they are only gracious enough to begin with the 

 supposition that he loves them, they must needs end in the 

 conviction of it. 



23. I am concerned, however, for the present, only with my 

 first or golden order, of which the Roof-foil, or house-leek, is 

 called in present botany, Sedum, ' the squatter,' because of its 

 way of fastening itself down on stones, or roof, as close as it 

 can sit. But I think this.an ungraceful notion of its behaviour ; 

 and as its blossoms are, of all flowers, the most sharply and 

 distinctly star-shaped, I shall call it ' Stella ' (providing other- 

 wise, in due time, for the poor little chickweeds ;) and the 

 common stonecrop will therefore be ' Stella domestica.' 



The second tribe, (at present saxifraga,) growing for the 

 most part wild on rocks, may, I trust, even in Protestant bot- 

 any, be named Francesca, after St. Francis of Assisi ; not only 

 for its modesty, and love of mountain ground, and poverty of 

 colour and leaf ; but also because the chief element of its dec- 

 oration, seen close, will be found in its spots, or stigmata. 



In the nomenclature of the third order I make no change. 



24. Now all this group of golden-blossoming plants agree 

 in general character of having a rich cluster of radical leaves, 

 from which they throw up a single stalk bearing clustered 

 blossoms ; for which stalk, when entirely leafless, I intend al- 

 ways to keep the term ' virgula,' the 'little rod ' not painfully 

 caring about it, but being able thus to define it with precision, 

 if required. And these are connected with the stems of branch- 

 ing shrubs through infinite varieties of structure, in which the 

 first steps of transition are made by carrying the cluster of 

 radical leaves up, and letting them expire gradually from the 

 rising stem : the changes of form in the leaves as they rise 

 higher from the ground being one of quite the most interest- 

 ing specific studies in every plant. I had set myself once, in 

 a bye-study for foreground drawing, hard on this point ; and 

 began, with Mr. Burgess, a complete analysis of the foliation 



