GENEALOGY. 125 



consists essentially in fastening the thoughts of the pupil 

 on the special character of the plant, in the place where 

 he is likely to see it ; and therefore, in expressing the power 

 of its race and order in the wider world, rather by refer- 

 ence to mythological associations than to botanical struct- 

 ure. 



7. For instance, Plate VIE. represents, of its real size, an or- 

 dinary spring flower in our English mountain fields. It is an 

 average example, not one of rare size under rare conditions, 

 rather smaller than the average, indeed, that I might get it 

 well into my plate. It is one of the flowers whose names I 

 think good to change ; but I look carefully through the exist- 

 ing titles belonging to it and its fellows, that I may keep all 

 I expediently can. I find, in the first place, that Linnaeus 

 called one group of its relations, Ophryds, from Ophrys, 

 Greek for the eyebrow, on account of their resemblance to 

 the brow of an animal frowning, or to the overshadowing 

 casque of a helmet. I perceive this to be really a very general 

 aspect of the flower ; and therefore, no less than in respect to 

 Linnaeus, I adopt this for the total name of the order, and 

 call them ' Ophrydee/ or, shortly, ' Ophryds.' 



8. Secondly : so far as I know these flowers myself, I per- 

 ceive them to fall practically into three divisions, one, grow- 

 ing in English meadows and Alpine pastures, and always add- 

 ing to their beauty ; another, growing in all sorts of places, 

 very ugly itself, and adding to the ugliness of its indiscrimi- 

 nated haunts ; and a third, growing mostly up in the air, with 

 as little root as possible, and of gracefully fantastic forms, 

 such as this kind of nativity and habitation might presuppose. 

 For the present, I am satisfied to give names to these three 

 groups only. There may be plenty of others which I do not 

 know, and which other people may name, according to their 

 knowledge. But in all these three kinds known to me, I per- 

 ceive one constant characteristic to be some manner of distor- 

 tion ; and I desire that fact, marking a spiritual (in my sense 

 of the word) character of extreme mystery, to be the first 

 enforced on the mind of the young learner. It is exhibited to 

 the English child, primarily, in the form of the stalk of each 



