VERONICA. 207 



I think I can find a balm-leaved one, though I don't know 

 what to make of it when I've got it, but it's called a ' Scorodo- 

 nia ' in Sowerby, and something very ugly besides ; I'll put 

 a bit of Teucrium Scorodonia in, to finish : and now how 

 will my young Proserpina arrange her bouquet, and rank the 

 family relations to their contentment ? 



5. She has only one kind of flowers in her hand, as botani- 

 cal classification stands at present ; and whether the system 

 be more rational, or in any human sense more scientific, which 

 puts calceolaria and speedwell together, and foxglove and 

 euphrasy ; and runs them on one side into the mints, and on 

 the other into the nightshades ; naming them, meanwhile, 

 some from diseases, some from vermin, some from blockheads, 

 and the rest anyhow : or the method I am pleading for, 

 which teaches us, watchful of their seasonable return and 

 chosen abiding places, to associate in our memory the flowers 

 which truly resemble, or fondly companion, or, in time kept 

 by the signs of Heaven, succeed, each other ; and to name 

 them in some historical connection with the loveliest fancies 

 and most helpful faiths of the ancestral world Proserpina be 

 judge ; with every maid that sets flowers on brow or breast 

 from Thule to Sicily. 



6. We will unbind our bouquet, then, and putting all the 

 rest of its flowers aside, examine the range and nature of the 

 little blue cluster only. 



And first we have to note of it, that the plan of the blos- 

 som in all the kinds is the same ; an irregular quatrefoil : and 

 irregular quatrefoils are of extreme rarity in flower form. I 

 don't myself know one, except the Veronica. The cruciform 

 vegetables the heaths, the olives, the lilacs, the little Tor- 

 mentillas, and the poppies, are all perfectly symmetrical. 

 Two of the petals, indeed, as a rule, are different from the 

 other two, except in the heaths ; and thus a distinctly crosslet 

 form obtained, but always an equally balanced one : while in 

 the Veronica, as in the Violet, the blossom always refers itself 

 to a supposed place on the stalk with respect to the ground 

 and the upper petal is always the largest. 



The supposed place is often very suppositious indeed for 



