1857.] botanical notes, notices, and queries. 249 



Alisma Plantago and Mr. Euskin. 



The picture alluded to at page 192 of this volume of the ' Phytologist ' 

 (1857) is now in the Manchester Exhibition. I can find no Alisma in it; 

 but there is a bed of the arrow-shaped leaves of Sagittaria, with a number 

 of white flowers dotted amongst them. The picture is hung rather too 

 high for very minute inspection ; but the botanical truth for which the 

 leaves are remarkable, does not, as far as I have been able to judge, ex- 

 tend to the flowers : they look too large in proportion to the leaves, and 

 each one seems to rise from the water on its own solitary stalk. My eyes 

 are not sufficiently sharp to make out their petals, etc., so I cannot tell 

 whether they actually represent the flowers of Bagittaria or those of any 

 other plant ; but the extraordinary painting of the leaves of the SagiUaria, 

 the Water-lilies, and Puchsias is worthy of all praise for careful elaboration 

 of details. The real merit of such pictures in an artistic point of view is 

 not a subject for discussion here ; it may well be left to those who are 

 better able to deal with it, and who have shown no want of zeal in criti- 

 cizing the peculiarities of Pre-Eaphaelite art. E. C. D. 



[In offering our grateful thanks to our obliging correspondent, E. C. D., 

 we beg to state explicitly that the ' Phytologist ' wdl not become the vehicle 

 for publishing either favom-able or unfavourable remarks on the peculiarities 

 of the so-called Pre-Eaphaelite school of art. Our mission is one of a larger 

 and more useful character. The sole journal devoted to the knowledge and 

 progress of British Botany has a higher aim than that of a fault-finder or 

 caviller. One of our objects is to teach the connection between nature and 

 art, — in a plain, straightforward way to show that art might be improved by 

 imitating nature somewhat more closely than some of our most celebrated 

 artists have done. This statement may be illustrated by an example. 

 Only some weeks ago, in a celebrated fashionable town in the south of 

 England, om- attention was called by a friend to a production of the potter's 

 art. Our opinion was also asked about its appearance and effect as a work 

 of art. The object itself was a night or bedroom candlestick. The base 

 was ornamented with Ivy leaves, and the same leaves, reduced in size, 

 were employed to ornament the place where the candle or light is placed. 

 The whole was suitable enough for its intended object. The ornamental 

 parts were also pretty enough ; but, as Horace teaches in his celebrated 

 epistle to the Pisoes, Ms non erat locus. The botanical truth was falsi- 

 fied or misrepresented. The leaves of the Ivy are never disposed circu- 

 larly at the base of the stem in an arrangement which botanists caU a 

 rosette, and the shape of the petals or component parts of the flower used 

 to ornament the top of the article is never like that of the leaves. Our 

 friend was told that the candlestick woidd have been just as beautiful if 

 the leaves of a plant which assumes a rosette-like disposition at the root 

 or base of the stem had been selected. And, again, if nature had been 

 followed, the glaring incongruity of representing petals as if of the same 

 form as leaves would have been avoided. The monstrous combinations on 

 our common pottery utensils, our room-papers, and our calicoes, are no- 

 ticed by the most incurious observers. Surely the ornaments put on these 

 fabrics would not be the less effective if they were real representations of 

 natural objects ; and if they were so, they would teach something. The 



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