208 
BRAMBLES AND BAY LEAVES. 
the honours which have been heaped upon it by authors 
who were misled by its spurious name. The plant 
described by Herodotus is not only the true lotos of 
eastern antiquity, but, in its essential character as a 
plant, has the highest claim to symbolical uses. It is 
one of the plants indigenous to the mud of the Nile, and 
grows plentifully also in the great streams of India. It 
is a plant of great beauty, closely allied in botanical pro¬ 
perties to the water lily of Britain; its roots creep along 
the bottoms of lakes and rivers, and are fleshy, bulbous 
masses, containing a mass of white pulp, as Pliny saith, 
“delicious to eat.” It is a stately and majestic creature 
of the waters; its leaves are heart-shaped, targeted, 
slightly waved, from four to twelve inches long, of a 
greenish purple hue, and float in broad rich masses on 
the surface of the water, so as to defend the flower 
in the centre, whether in deep or shallow water; the 
leaves always lies flat on the surface, the hollow petiole, 
to which they are attached, increasing in length as the 
waters deepen. The flowers are produced upon a stem 
rising about two feet above the w r ater; they are as large 
as the palm of the hand, of a tulip-like form, with fifteen 
pointed petals. When full-blown, the flower is often of 
a beautiful rose colour, sometimes white or yellow, and 
always delicately fragrant; it has forty or more stamens, 
and one inversely bell-shaped pistil,* with sixteen or seven¬ 
teen cells, containing seeds half an inch long, with a rind 
black and smooth, and, when ripe, of a taste finer than 
almonds. The description of Pliny is correct, with one 
exception, and that is, he tells us, in his simple manner, 
* Polyandria monogynia of Linnaeus. 
