the middle ages, fancying he discovered the Q|Pg£j^j 



very face of his Lord gazing at him from the 



tiny azure flower, exclaimed, "It is the Vera 



Icon!" and then the writer asks, "Why should 



not this dim, imperfect portrait be rendered 



by floricultural science more distinct for all 



lovers of flowers and of legend to see?" "And 



this," he adds, "before long will be seen." 



Other new forms promised, "to be seen, 

 handled, and smelled by our children or by our 

 children's children," are "the mulgas, the 

 exquisitely scented jessipas, the great, shell- 

 like eupepias, the fantastic pyresas, the cor- 

 gonas, the daffobalias, the alterarias, and the 

 carminarias." "Who knows," he asks, "but 

 that it may be from these forms, as yet only 

 dimly foreshadowed to us in the hothouses, 

 that the ladies and lovers and poets of the 

 future may draw their inspiration, and each 

 be, in Dante's phrase, 



" ' . . that flower whom daily I invoke 

 Both morn and eve' ?" 



Most of these foreshadowed marvels may 

 be no more than the creations of an imagina- 

 [ 115 ] 



