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study only those plants with prominent characteristics, and this 
is the explanation why the total seems to be limited in number 
to about twenty different species. The natural foliage was carved 
with the utmost patience and loving care, and, therefore, settled 
into a fairly uniform type. With that uniformity came monotony, 
and about the middle of the 14th century it was abandoned as 
being too troublesome, and conventionalised work took its place. 
When the building of churches started afresh, following on the 
great prosperity of the woollen trades, the foliage ornamentation 
in sculpture was of the conventional kind, with the leaves 
arranged horizontally on the capitals and in geometrical pattern 
on the bosses. The Church of St. Mary Redcliffe, Bristol, is a 
noble example of this period of ecclesiastical building. The vault¬ 
ing of its aisles and choir contain an excellent series of examples, 
where every junction of every rib, in the manv-ribbed vault, is 
completed by a carved keystone or boss. The plants of the 
previous century are used over and over again, but 
in addition it is possible to recognise the holly, fig, bay, hop, 
thistle, hardfern, dandelion, crinkly cabbage leaf, and sunflower. 
A series of water-colour drawings of these bosses give an 
idea how the carvers sought to decorate the intersections with 
floral designs done in the workshops and then placed in position. 
Some of the plants depicted are the vine, the hardfern, the oak, 
the ivy, the bay in fruit, a conventional leaf often used 
in architecture, the dandelion, the rose-en-soleil—a badge of 
Henry ATI (1487), therefore, one of the later bosses, holly with 
prickly leaves and well marked veins, hawthorn in blossom, con¬ 
ventional flower and fruit, single rose arranged geometrically on 
a branch, dandelion and maple leaves together. 
. A handsome'tomb in St. Mark’s, Bristol, is a good example 
of later foliage decoration and ornate ornament, in which the 
cornice is limited to a running pattern of the tendrils, leaves and 
fruit of the vine, the cresting of the Tudor flower, suggested by 
the strawberry leaf and the rose finishing off the screen work of 
the arch. Hundreds of such examples are to be seen in the 
stone monuments and wooden screens in the work of the parish 
churches of the 15th and 16th centuries, and a good deal of 
modern ecclesiastic carving- is but a copy of the characteristic 
reign of naturalistic foliage. 
In drawing to a close the consideration of “ Flowers 
in Stone,” it must be clear that, although the work of the 
craftsman at the different periods could be excellent, yet his 
best efforts are no more than a coarse resemblance of Nature’s 
handiwork. The humblest weed that grows in the cranny of 
a wall has a beauty that no mason can emulate, and his most 
faithful reproductions must ever disappoint the true lover of 
Nature. 
