GENEALOGY. 137 



our English. *noral story-tellers, is added for the practical 

 reason, that I think the sound will fasten in the minds of chil- 

 dren the essential characteristic of the race, the cutting of the 

 outer edge of the petal as if with scissors. 



vn. VEST ALES. I allow this Latin form, because Hestiades 

 would have been confused with Heliades. The order is 

 named ' of the hearth,' from its manifold domestic use, and 

 modest blossoming. 



vin. CYTHERIDES. Dedicate to Venus, but in all purity 

 and peace of thought. Giulietta, for the coarse, and more 

 than ordinarily false, Polygala. 



ix. HELIADES. The sun-flowers. * In English, Alcestid, in 

 honor to Chaucer and the Daisy. 



x. DELPHIDES. Sacred to Apollo. Granata, changed from 

 Punica, in honor to Granada and the Moors. 



xi. HESPERIDES. Already a name given to the order. Aegle, 

 prettier and more classic than Limonia, includes the idea of 

 brightness in the blossom. 



xii. ATHENAIDES. I take Fraxinus into this group, because 

 the mountain ash, in its hawthorn-scented flower, scarletest of 

 berries, and exquisitely formed and finished leafage, belongs 

 wholly to the floral decoration of our native rocks, and is asso- 

 ciated with their human interests, though lightly, not less 

 spiritually, than the olive with the mind of Greece. 



28. The remaining groups are in great part natural ; but I 



the outer edge ; in Lychnis, the petal is terminated in two rounded 

 lobes and the fringe withdrawn to the top of the limb ; in Scintilla, the 

 petal is divided into two sharp lobes, without any fringe of the limb ; 

 and in Mica, the minute and scarcely visible flowers have simple and 

 far separate petals. The confusion of these four great natural races 

 under the vulgar or accidental botanical names of spittle-plant, shore- 

 plant, sand-p^ant, etc., has become entirely intolerable by any rational 

 student ; but the names ' Scintilla,' substituted for Stellaria, and ' Mica ' 

 for the utterly ridiculous and probably untrue Sagina, connect them- 

 selves naturally with Lychnis, in expression of the luminous power of 

 the white and sparkling blossoms. 



* Clytia will include all the true sun- flowers, and Falconia the 

 hawkweeds ; but I have not yet completed the analysis of this vast 

 and complex order, so as to determine the limits of Margarita and 

 Alcestis. 



