THE IRIS 141 



that I behold something more than a flower. Many 

 men and women pass me by, or speak with me and 

 eat with me, and both affect and teach me less. It is 

 wrong, but it is true. 



Take I. susiana, the great Turkey fleur-de-luce of old 

 botanists. When first I saw it in the market-place at 

 Toulon, I fancied that the women who sat beside the 

 mossy fountain there were selling artificial blossoms 

 of the sort that make hideous many French burying- 

 places ; but then I came nearer and found the verit- 

 able mourning flower of the Japanese a huge iris, 

 with petals that seemed woven of transparent crepe. 

 Sorrow is written in cryptic language on its delicate 

 darkness : a fitting emblem of a nation's mourning, 

 and worthy to rest on the cofHn of saint or hero, is 

 this sombre and solemn thing. As I write a specimen 

 stands before me, that trembled into life yesterday to 

 speak to the living of death. Its texture is a sable 

 silvered. Like arches of little caverns, the style-arms 

 with upturned crests bend over the anthers and open 

 above each signal patch black as a pall. Closely 

 spattered with ebony are the falls, and between the 

 interstices of this mottling run tiny lines of wine- 

 purple. The hairs are black and widely scattered, 

 not only over the fall but over the standards also. 

 These standards spring gloriously up, and are densely 

 embroidered with black on palest grey. The mark- 

 ings are finest and smallest along the median lines, 

 then they increase in size, and finally stretch into a 

 delicate, dark venation at the petal edge. The falls 

 are five and a half inches high, and meet together 



