142 PROSERPINA. 



CHAPTER XII. 



CORA AND KRONOS. 



, 1. OP all the lovely wild plants and few, mountain-bred, 

 in Britain, are other than lovely, that fill the clefts and crest 

 the ridges of my Brantwood rock, the dearest to me, by far, 

 are the clusters of whortleberry which divide possession of 

 the lower slopes with the wood hyacinth and pervenche. 

 They are personally and specially dear to me for their asso- 

 ciation in my mind with the woods of Montanvert ; but the 

 plant itself, irrespective of all accidental feeling, is indeed so 

 beautiful in all its ways so delicately strong in the spring of 

 its leafage, so modestly wonderful in the formation of its 

 fruit, and so pure in choice of its haunts, not capriciously or 

 unfamiliarly, but growing in luxuriance through all the health- 

 iest and sweetest seclusion of mountain territory throughout 

 Europe, that I think I may without any sharp remonstrance 

 be permitted to express for this once only, personal feeling in 

 my nomenclature, calling it in Latin 'Myrtilla Cara,' and in 

 French ' Myrtille Cherie,' but retaining for it in English its 

 simply classic name, * Blue Whortle.' 



2. It is the most common representative of the group of 

 Myrtillse, which, on reference to our classification, will be 

 found central between the Ericse and Aurora. The distinc- 

 tions between these three families may be easily remembered, 

 and had better be learned before going farther ; but first let 

 us note their fellowship. They are all Oreiades, mountain 

 plants ; in specialty, they are all strong in stem, low in stature, 

 and the Ericae and Aurora glorious in the flush of their in- 

 finitely exulting flowers, (" the rapture of the heath " above 

 spoken of, p. 63.) But all the essential loveliness of the Myr- 

 tillse is in their leaves and fruit : the first always exquisitely 

 finished and grouped like the most precious decorative work 

 of sacred painting ; the second, red or purple, like beads of 

 coral or amethyst. Their minute flowers have rarely any 



