210 PROSERPINA. 



see a steeple of strawberry blossoms rise to contradict us ; 

 we can venture to say of a foxglove that it grows in a spire, 

 without any danger of finding, farther on, a carpet of prostrate 

 and entangling digitalis ; and we may pronounce of a butter- 

 cup that it grows mostly in meadows without fear of finding 

 ourselves at the edge of the next thicket, under the shadow of 

 a buttercup-bush growing into valuable timber. But the 

 Veronica reclines with the lowly,* upon occasion, and aspires, 

 with the proud ; is here the pleased companion of the ground- 

 ivies, and there the unrebuked lival of the larkspurs : on the 

 rocks of Coniston it effaces itself almost into the film of a 

 lichen ; it pierces the snows of Iceland with the gentian : and 

 in the Falkland Islands is a Avhite-blossomed evergreen, of 

 which botanists are in dispute whether it be Veronica or Olive. 



12. Of these many and various forms, I find the manners 

 and customs alike inconstant ; and this of especially singular 

 in them that the Alpine and northern species bloom hardily 

 in contest with the retiring snows, while with us they wait till 

 the spring is past, and offer themselves to us only in consola- 

 tion for the vanished violet and primrose. As we farther ex- 

 amine the ways of plants, I suppose we shall find some that 

 determine upon a fixed season, and will bloom methodically 

 in June or July, whether in Abyssinia or Greenland ; and 

 others, like the violet and crocus, which are flowers of the 

 spring, at whatever time of the f a vouring or frowning year the 

 spring returns to their country. I suppose also that botan- 

 ists and gardeners know all these matters thoroughly : but 

 they don't put them into their books, and the clear notions of 

 them only come to me now, as I think and watch. 



13. Broadly, however, the families of the Veronica fall into 

 three main divisions, those which have round leaves lobed 

 at the edge, like ground ivy ; those which have small thyme- 

 like leaves ; and those which have long leaves like a foxglove's, 

 only smaller never more than two or two and a half inches 

 long. I therefore take them in these connections, though 

 without any bar between the groups ; only separating the Re- 



* See distinction between recumbent and rampant herbs, below, under 

 ' Veronica Agrestis,' p. 212. 



