THE SEED AND HUSK. 151 



wood, I will close this first volume of Proserpina with some neces- 

 sary statements respecting the operations, serviceable to other 

 creatures than themselves, in which the lives of the noblest 

 plants are ended : honourable in this service equally, though 

 evanescent, some, in the passing of a breeze or the dying 

 of a day ; and patient some, of storm and time, serene in 

 fruitful sanctity, through all the uncounted ages which Man 

 has polluted with his tears. 



CHAPTER XIH 



THE SEED AND HUSK. 



1. NOT the least sorrowful, nor least absurd of the confu- 

 sions brought on us by unscholarly botanists, blundering 

 into foreign languages, when they do not know how to use 

 their own, is that which has followed on their practice of 

 calling the seed-vessels of flowers 'egg-vessels/* in Latin; 

 thus involving total loss of the power of the good old English 

 word 'husk,' and the good old French one, 'cosse.' For all 

 the treasuries of plants (see Chapter IV., 17) may be best 

 conceived, and described, generally, as consisting of ' seed ' 

 and 'husk,' for the most part two or more seeds, in a husk 

 composed of two or more parts, as pease in their shell, pips 

 in an orange, or kernels in a walnut ; but whatever their num- 

 ber, or the method of their enclosure, let the student keep 

 clear in his mind, for the base of all study of fructification, 

 the broad distinction between the seed, as one thing, and the 

 husk as another : the seed, essential to the continuance of the 

 plant's race ; and the husk, adapted, primarily, to its guard 

 and dissemination ; but secondarily, to quite other and far 

 more important functions. 



2. For on this distinction follows another practical one of 

 great importance. A seed may serve, and many do mightily 

 serve, for the food of man, when boiled, crushed, or otherwise 



* More literally " persons to whom the care of eggs is entrusted.' 



