126 PROSERPINA. 



flower, attaching it to the central virga. This stalk is always 

 twisted once and a half round, as if somebody had been try- 

 ing to wring the blossom off ; and the name of the family, in 

 Proserpina, will therefore be ' Contorta ' * in Latin, and 

 ' Wreathe-wort ' in English. 



Farther : the beautiful power of the one I have drawn in 

 its spring life, is in the opposition of its dark purple to the 

 primrose in England, and the pale yellow anemone in the 

 Alps. And its individual name will be, therefore, * Contorta 

 purpurea ' Purple Wreathe-wort. 



And in drawing it, I take care to dwell on this strength of 

 its colour, and to show thoroughly that it is a dark blossom, f 

 before I trouble myself about its minor characters. 



9. The second group of this kind of flowers live, as I said, 

 in all sorts of places ; but mostly, I think, in disagreeable 

 ones, torn and irregular ground, under alternations of un- 

 wholesome heat and shade, and among swarms of nasty in- 

 sects. I cannot yet venture on any bold general statement 

 about them, but I think that is mostly their way ; and at all 

 events, they themselves are in the habit of dressing in livid 

 and unpleasant colours ; and are distinguished from all other 

 flowers by twisting, not only their stalks, but one of their 

 petals, not once and a half only, but two or three times round, 

 and putting it far out at the same time, as a foul jester would 

 put out his tongue : while also the singular power of grotesque 

 mimicry, which, though strong also in the other groups of 

 their race, seems in the others more or less playful, is, in 

 these, definitely degraded, and, in aspect, malicious. 



10. Now I find the Latin name ' Satyrium ' attached already 

 to one sort of these flowers ; and we cannot possibly have a 

 better one for all of them. It is true that, in its first Greek 

 form, Dioscorides attaches it to a white, not a livid, flower ; 

 and I dare say there are some white ones of the breed : but, 

 in its full sense, the term is exactly right for the entire group 



* Linnaeus used this term for the oleanders ; but evidently with less 

 accuracy than usual. 



f ' &/0rj 7rop<J>upoei5ij " says Dioscorides, of the race generally, but 

 u &vOr) Be viroirtpipvpa. '' of this particular one. 



