226 PROSERPINA. 



Cape varieties, in all of which, judging from such plates as 

 have been accessible to me, the crests or fringes of the lower 

 petal are less conspicuous than in the smaller species ; and 

 the flower almost takes the aspect of a broom-blossom or 

 pease-blossom. In the smaller European varieties, the white 

 fringes of the lower petal are the most important and charac- 

 teristic part of the flower, and they are, among European wild 

 flowers, absolutely without any likeness of associated struct- 

 ure. The fringes or crests which, towards the origin of petals, 

 so often give a frosted or gemmed appearance to the centres 

 of flowers, are here thrown to the extremity of the petal, and 

 suggest an almost coralline structure of blossom, which in no 

 other instance whatever has been imitated, still less carried 

 out into its conceivable varieties of form. How many such 

 varieties might have been produced if these fringes of the 

 Giulietta, or those already alluded to of Lucia nivea, had been 

 repeated and enlarged ; as the type, once adopted for complex 

 bloom in the thistle-head, is multiplied in the innumerable 

 gradations of thistle, teasel, hawkweed, and aster ! We might 

 have had flowers edged with lace finer than was ever woven 

 by mortal fingers, or tasselled and braided with fretwork of 

 silver, never tarnished or hoarfrost that grew brighter in the 

 sun. But it was not to be, and after a few hints of what 

 might be done in this kind, the Fate, or Folly, or, on recent 

 theories, the extreme fitness and consequent survival, of the 

 Thistles and Dandelions, entirely drives the fringed Lucias 

 and blue-flushing milkworts out of common human neighbour- 

 hood, to live recluse lives with the memories of the abbots of 

 Cluny, and pastors of Piedmont. 



12. I have called the Giulietta ' "blue-flushing ' because it is 



ill thought of, as it really contains three ideas ; and the plant does, 

 without doubt, somewhat resemble box, and grows on the ground ; far 

 more fitly called 'ground-box ' than the Veronica 'ground-oak.' I want 

 to find a pretty name for it in connection with Savoy or Dauphine, 

 where it indicates, as above stated, the healthy districts of hard lime- 

 stone. I do not remember it as ever occurring among the dark and moist 

 shales of the inner mountain ranges, which at once confine and pollute 

 the air. 



