OUTSIDE AND IN. 107 



"Thistles occur on the coins of James IV., Mary, James V., and 

 James VI. ; and on those of James VI. they are for the first time 

 siccompanied by the motto, Nemo me impune lacessit. 



' k A collar of thistles appears on the gold bonnet-pieces of James V. 

 of 1539 ; and the royal ensigns, as depicted in Sir David Lindsay's 

 armorial register of 1542, are surrounded by a collar formed entirely of 

 golden thistles, with an oval badge attached. 



" This collar, however, was a mere device until the institution, or, as 

 it is generally but inaccurately called, the revival, of the order of the 

 Thistle by James VII. (II. of England), which took place on May 29, 

 1687." 



Date of James III.'s reign 14601488. 



CHAPTER IX. 



OUTSIDE AND IN. 



1. THE elementary study of methods of growth, given in 

 the following chapter, has been many years written, (the 

 greater part soon after the fourth volume of ' Modern Paint- 

 ers ') ; and ought now to be rewritten entirely ; but having no 

 time to do this, I leave it with only a word or two of modifi- 

 cation, because some truth and clearness of incipient notion 

 will be conveyed by it to young readers, from which I can 

 afterwards lop the errors, and into which I can graft the finer 

 facts, better than if I had a less blunt embryo to begin with. 



2. A stem, then, broadly speaking, (I had thus began the 

 old chapter,) is the channel of communication between the leaf 

 and root ; and if the leaf can grow directly from the root 

 there is no stern : so that it is well first to conceive of all 

 plants as consisting of leaves and roots only, with the condi- 

 tion that each leaf must have its own quite particular root * 

 somewhere. 



Let a b c, Fig. 16, be three leaves, each, as you see, with its 

 own root, and by no means dependent on other leaves for its 



* Recent botanical research makes this statement more than dubitable. 

 Nevertheless, on no other supposition can the forms and action of tree- 

 branches, so far as at present known to me, be yet clearly accounted 

 for. 



