168 PROSERPINA. 



better ; one is only afraid of their tearing or puffing them* 

 selves into something worse. Nay, even the quite natural 

 and simple conditions of inferior vegetable do not in the 

 least suggest, to the unbitten or unblighted human intellect, 

 the notion of development into anything other than their like : 

 one does not expect a mushroom to translate itself into a 

 pineapple, nor a betony to moralize itself into a lily, nor a 

 snapdragon to soften himself into a lilac. 



8. It is very possible, indeed, that the recent phrenzy for 

 the investigation of digestive and reproductive operations in 

 plants may by this time have furnished the microscopic mal- 

 ice of botanists with providentially disgusting reasons, or 

 demoniacally nasty necessities, for every possible spur, spike, 

 jag, sting, rent, blotch, flaw, freckle, filth, or venom, which 

 can be detected in the construction, or distilled from the dis- 

 solution, of vegetable organism. But with these obscene 

 processes and prurient apparitions the gentle and happy 

 scholar of flowers has nothing whatever to do. I am amazed 

 and saddened, more than I care to say, by finding how much 

 that is abominable may be discovered by an ill-taught curi- 

 osity, in the purest things that earth is allowed to produce 

 for us ; perhaps if we were less reprobate in our own ways, 

 the grass which is our type might conduct itself better, even 

 though it has no hope but of being cast into the oven ; in the 

 meantime, healthy human eyes and thoughts are to be set on 

 the lovely laws of its growth and habitation, and not on the 

 mean mysteries of its birth. 



9. I relieve, therefore, our presently inquiring souls from 

 any farther care as to the reason for a violet's spur, or for 

 the extremely ugly arrangements of its stamens and style, 

 invisible unless by vexatious and vicious peeping. You are to 

 think of a violet only in its green leaves, and purple or golden 

 petals ; you are to know the varieties of form in both, proper 

 to common species ; and in what kind of places they all most 

 fondly live, and most deeply glow. 



"And the recreation of the minde which is taken heereby 

 cannot be but verie good and honest, for they admonish and 

 stir up a man to that which is comely and honest. For 



