GIULIETTA. 225 



side, and turfed with delicately chosen and adjusted sods, 

 meant to be kept duly trim by the scythe. And only on this 

 terrace does the Giulietta choose to show herself, and even 

 there, not in any consistent places, but gleaming out here in 

 one year, there in another, like little bits of unexpected sky 

 through cloud ; and entirely refusing to allow either bank or 

 terrace to be mown the least trim during her time of disport 

 there. So spared and indulged, there are no more wayward 

 things in all the woods or wilds ; no more delicate and per- 

 fect things to be brought up by watch through day and night, 

 than her recumbent clusters, trickling, sometimes almost 

 gushing through the grass, and meeting in tiny pools of flaw- 

 less blue. 



10. I will not attempt at present to arrange the varieties 

 of the Giulietta, for I find that all the larger and presumably 

 characteristic forms belong to the Cape ; and only since Mr. 

 Froude came back from his African explorings have I been 

 able to get any clear idea of the brilliancy and associated in- 

 finitude of the Cape flowers. If I could but write down the 

 substance of what he has told me, in the course of a chat or 

 two, which have been among the best privileges of my recent 

 stay in London, (prolonged as it has been by recurrence of 

 illness,) it would be a better summary of what should be 

 generally known in the natural history of southern plants than 

 I could glean from fifty volumes of horticultural botany. In 

 the meantime, everything being again thrown out of gear by 

 the aforesaid illness, I must let this piece of ' Proserpina ' 

 break off, as most of my work does and as perhaps all of it 

 may soon do leaving only suggestion for the happier re- 

 search of the students who trust me thus far. 



11. Some essentia 1 . noints respecting the flower I shall note, 

 however, before ending. There is one large and frequent 

 species of it of which the flowers are delicately yellow, touched 

 with tawny red forming one of the chief elements of wild forf- 

 ground vegetation in the healthy districts of hard Alpine lime- 

 stone.* This is, I believe, the only European type of the large 



* In present Botany, Polygala Chamaebuxus ; C. 316: or, in English, 

 Much Milk Ground-box. It is not, as matters usually go, a name to be 



