

OUTSIDE AND IN. 113 



But the crabby, or insect-like, joint, which you get in sea- 

 weeds and cacti, means either that the plant is to be dragged 

 and wagged here and there at the will of waves, and to have 

 no spring nor mind of its own ; or else that it has at least no 

 springy intention and elasticity of purpose, but only a knobby, 

 knotty, prickly, malignant stubbornness, and incoherent opin- 

 iativeness ; crawling about, and coggling, and grovelling, and 

 aggregating anyhow, like the minds of so many people whom 

 one knows ! 



8. Returning then to our grasses, in which the real rooting 

 and junction of the leaves with each other is at these joints ; 

 we find that therefore every leaf of grass may be thought of as 

 consisting of two main parts, for which we shall want two 

 separate names. The lowest part, which wraps itself round 

 to become strong, we will call the ' staff,' and for the free- 

 floating outer part we will take specially the name given at 

 present carelessly to a large number of the plants themselves, 

 'flag.' This will give a more clear meaning to the words 

 ' rod ' (virga), and ' staff ' (baculus), when they occur together, 

 as in the 23rd Psalm ; and remember the distinction is that a 

 rod bends like a switch, but a staff is stiff. I keep the well- 

 known name ' blade ' for grass-leaves in their fresh green 

 state. 



9. You felt, as you were bending down the paper into the 

 form d, Fig. 21, the difficulty and awkwardness of the transi- 

 tion from the tubular form of the staff to the flat one of the 

 flag. The mode in which this change is effected is one of the 

 most interesting features in plants, for you will find presently 

 that the leaf-stalk in ordinary leaves is only a means of accom- 

 plishing the same change from round to flat. But you know I 

 said just now that some leaves were not flat, but set upright, 

 edgeways. It is not a common position in two-leaved trees ; 

 but if you can run out and look at an arbor vitse, it may interest 

 you to see its hatchet-shaped vertically crested cluster of 

 leaves transforming themselves gradually downwards into 

 branches ; and in one-leaved trees the vertically edged group 

 is of great importance. 



10. Cut out another piece of paper like a in Fig. 21, but 



