Chapter II: What May Be Seen Upon the Earth (1)

"There lives and works
A soul in all things, and that soul is God."

--COWPER.

We have returned, at least in an astronomical sense, to the budding, happy, radiant spring; the sun, in its apparent course, crosses the equinoctial line; the duration of the day, transiently equal to that of the night, will augment in proportion as the great luminary describes above our horizon greater and yet greater arcs of a circle. Yet this is not the budding, happy, radiant spring of the poets. No, if it be spring according to the law of universal gravitation, it is winter still by the law of life. The forest trees, such as the oak, the ash, the fir, and the beech, continue to present the image of death; and the sap which should reanimate them has not awakened from its winter sleep.

A solemn moment is it when the sap--that life-blood of the plant--arrested by the icy grasp of winter in its circulatory movement--receives a new impulse through the vivifying action of the central luminary of our system. What a subject for study and reflection!

It has been very finely dealt with by Longfellow.

How wonderful! he exclaims,--and we only regard the wonder with indifference, because it is repeated annually,--how wonderful is the advent of spring!--the great annual miracle, as he calls it, of the blossoming of Aaron's rod, repeated on myriads and myriads of branches!--the gentle progression and growth of herbs, flowers, trees,--gentle, and yet irrepressible,--which no force can stay, no violence restrain,--like the influence of love, which wins its way, and cannot be withstood by any human power, because itself is divine power. True enough it is, that if spring came but once in a century, or burst forth with the terror of an earthquake, and not in silence, what wonder and expectation there would be in all hearts to behold the miraculous change! But now the silent succession suggests nothing but necessity. To most men, only the _cessation_ of the miracle would be miraculous, and the perpetual exercise of God's power seems less wonderful than its withdrawal would be.

* * * * *

May we venture on another quotation? We take it, gentle reader, from a living poet, whose works are not so widely read as their genuine poetical feeling and wealth of language deserve--I mean Sydney Dobell.

After describing the return of Spring, and her grief and astonishment at the spectacle of earth, pale, frozen, seemingly dead, he continues,--

"She fell upon
The corse, and warmed it. The natural earth,
Which was not _dead_ but _slept_, unclosed her eyes;
Then Spring, o'erawed at her own miracle,
Fell on her knees.
Meanwhile the attendant birds,--her haste outstript,--
Chasing her voice, crowd round, and fill the air
With jocund loyalty.
With flowers Spring dressed the Earth;
Then did her mother, Earth, rejoice in her;
And she, with filial love and joy, admired,
Weeping and trembling, in the wont of maids.
Meantime her pious fame had filled the skies.
He that begat her, the almighty Sun,
Passing in regal state, did call her 'child,'
And blessed her and her mother where they sat--
Her by the imposition of bright hands,
The Earth with kisses. Then the Spring would go,
Abashed with bliss,--decorous in the face
Of love parental. But the Earth stood up,
And held her there; and, these encircling, came
All kind of happy shapes that wander space,
Brightening the air. And they two sang like gods
Under the answering heavens."

We think that the ancients, if they had seriously reflected upon the important part played by the sun in the economy of nature; how it is the heart, and spring, and inner power of every movement and manifestation of life; how it is, as Sir David Brewster says, the centre and soul of our world, the lamp that lights it, the fire that heats it, the magnet that guides and controls it, the fountain of colour, which gives its azure to the sky, its verdure to the fields, its rainbow-hues to the gay world of flowers, and the purple light of love to the marble cheek of youth and beauty;--we think that the ancients, if they had thought upon, or had known, all this, would not have given the earth a chief place in our system. And that they did so is all the more strange when we remember that they attributed to the world a _soul_ (the "soul of the world" is a favourite idea with the great philosophers of antiquity), and looked upon the planets as living creatures.

But they were swayed by that egotistical instinct which leads man to refer everything to himself, even the very gods which he has created after his own image. The Bible teaches us that there is but one God. Alas! are there not as many gods as there are men? Does not each of us create a deity in accordance with his own inclinations, his mode of thought, his degree of mental culture, the sphere of his ideas? Is the God of a tolerant philosopher identical with that of a bigoted fanatic? It is not so much due to a deceitful appearance, an optical illusion, as to a kind of innate infatuation, that the human race have come to consider the planet they inhabit as the centre of the universe.

CAUSES OF THE CIRCULATION OF THE SAP.

Let us return to the sap, the life-blood of vegetation.

How is it that its movement does not recommence at the same time in all plants? Why are some clothed with leaves when the others are scarcely budding? Wherefore, in certain genera, do the flowers appear before the leaves?

Some authorities assert,--but facts show it to be a purely gratuitous supposition,--that the flower, which, with the fruit, seems to be the goal or object of vegetation, demands a greater activity on the part of the sap. But, in truth, many trees and shrubs, such as the poplar, the willow, and the hazel, flourish at an epoch when the sap is barely aroused from its protracted lethargy.

These are questions which have still to be answered.

But upon yet another question we may dwell at some detail. What is the cause of the circulation of the sap?

To the best of our knowledge, this important problem has never been propounded as it should have been. And for this reason: all observers who have taken up its consideration have had in view only the _rising sap_, and the cause of its rising. Evidently this is but a _part_ of the problem. The ascending sap, after undergoing an important modification in the leaves, becomes the _descending_ sap; just as the venous blood is transformed, on coming into contact with the air in the lungs, into arterial blood. It is this alternative movement of _going and coming_ which constitutes the circulation both of the sap and the blood, and which ceases completely only with the life of the plant or the animal. We must, therefore, bear in mind,--which has not been hitherto done,--these two opposite, yet indissolubly connected, movements, before we can approach with advantage the solution of the proposed question.[40]

Science consists in discovering, among the different ways of looking at things which present themselves to the mind, the one which appears to explain most clearly the phenomena submitted to observation. He who doubts the accuracy of our remark need only join us in reviewing the different opinions enunciated up to the present time on the cause of the rise of the sap.

Grew, an English botanist, a contemporary of Newton, and his fellow-member in the Royal Society of London, attributed the rise of the sap to the play of the utricles of which the plant is composed. These utricles, he said, maintain a close intercommunication; through their contraction, the sap passes from the lower to the upper, and thus arrives almost at the top of the plant. Grew's authority carried conviction to the minds of many botanists, particularly to those of his compatriots. Yet was his opinion altogether imaginary; the supposed contraction of the utricles does not exist.

* * * * *

La Hire, a French botanist, who flourished at the beginning of the eighteenth century,--son of the geometrician of the same name,--pretended that he could account for the rise of the sap by the play of the little valves with which the interior of the sap-vessels was furnished; at the same time he assigned a very active _rôle_ to the fibres of the roots. The fibres elevate, he said, the whole column of superimposed liquid, incessantly introducing, by a kind of suction, new fluids into the organs.

Unfortunately, the "play of the little valves, with which the interior of the sap-vessels is furnished," is a pure invention of La Hire's. Instead of growing wise by experiment, he suffered himself to be led astray by a false analogy. Valves are found in the veins of man and the mammals; but no one has ever seen the sides of the vessels of a plant garnished with valves to induce a circulation of the sap.

Mariotte, so well known by his researches into the compressibility of air, represented the rise of the sap as dependent upon what he called "the attraction taking place in the narrow tubes"--upon what, in fact, we now term _capillarity_. "This first entrance of water into the roots is in obedience," he said, "to a law of nature; for wherever very narrow tubes exist which touch the water, it enters into them, and even rises, contrary to its natural inclination."

* * * * *

Many botanists adopted the opinion of Mariotte. But if it were well founded, all _capillary_ bodies, even inorganic ones, ought to present a circulatory movement analogous to that of the sap. Now, this is not the case. A body must be animated, must be living, for attraction to take place in the narrow tubes, and to produce a movement comparable to that of the nutritive liquid.

* * * * *

Malpighi attributed the rise of the sap to the alternating rarefaction and condensation of this liquid by heat; Perrault, to a kind of fermentation; De Saussure, to a peculiar irritability of the vessels. Of these three hypotheses, the first is purely physical; the second, chemical; the third, vital. So, as we see, there is something for everybody--_chacun à son gout!_

* * * * *

The same question has, in our own day, been taken up from a new point of view, on the occasion of Dutrochet's discovery of the endosmose. This philosopher was one of the first to perceive that two liquids, separated from one another by a membrane, quickly effect or induce a current which always carries the thinner liquid towards the denser, and ends by mingling the two completely. "It is endosmose," he said, "which produces at one and the same time the progression of the sap by _impulsion_, and its progression by _affluxion_. The sap would receive its impulse in the spongioles of the roots; thence would be carried towards the upper parts by the turgescence of the organs--by the affluxion, which would thus act as a forcible mode of suction."

The basis of this theory is, that the sap contained in the upper parts will be more concentrated or denser than that in the lower portions of the same plant. But this is a mere supposition. And even this supposition has been swept away by the recent experiments of Hartig and others, which show that the difference in density between the two saps is not only almost null, but in many ligneous plants the lower sap is, on the contrary, denser than the upper.[41]

* * * * *

Finally, and more recently, M. Joseph Boehm has put forth a theory which offers some points of analogy with that of Grew. According to Boehm, the rise of the sap is the effect of a suction, the cause of which must be sought both in the atmospheric pressure and in the transpiration which takes place through the organs, and notably through the leaves of the plant. The part which he attributes to the cellules, of which the organs are composed, he thus describes:--"When the superficial cellules of the plant lose water by transpiration," he says, "of two things, one will happen: either these cellules will contract and shrivel, or they carry up, by a kind of aspiration, to the neighbouring cellules, situated in deeper layers, a quantity of water equivalent to what they had lost. In the normal condition, the latter is always the result; each cellule takes from its neighbour what itself has lost, and this action, becoming more and more general, is continued from the leaves to the extremities of the roots. The cellules of the spongioles replace the water which they have yielded, from the humid medium surrounding them."

In support of this theory,[42] M. Boehm has made several experiments, which, we fear, will not carry conviction to every mind.

* * * * *

In the different theories which we have been attempting to explain, their authors, as it seems to us, have neglected an essential element--the _life_ of the plant. Then, the experiments undertaken by way of proof, have been made upon cut stems or branches, which, consequently, did not enjoy their integral vitality. In fact, the results indicated could just as well have been obtained with inert as with living matter.

Taking into account all these considerations, we are doubtful whether any value can be placed on the theories just enunciated. Undoubtedly, physical causes, such as capillarity, heat, evaporation, atmospheric pressure, electricity, have a certain marked and constant action. But this action is here complex; it is found combined with a new force, whose effects constitute precisely the profound difference which exists between the massive mineral framework of the globe and the transitory beings peopling its surface. It matters little whether we call it _vital force_, or otherwise; sufficient that it _exists_. We must, therefore, allow for its influence when endeavouring to explain the varied movements of which plants, as well as animals, may be the seat.

_A._--PLANTS.

_The Daisy_ (_Bellis perennis_).

"Wel by reason men it call maie
The daisie, or els the eye of the daie."[43]

Among all the treasures of the floral world, that which should excite in each of us the tenderest emotion, and most readily stir up in our minds thoughts too deep for tears, is the Daisy,--that favourite of our innocent and happy childhood.

Ah! would we were now as content with simple joys as in the days when that wee, modest, crimson-tipped flower was to us a beauty, a prize, and a charm!

We wonder how many of our poets have done homage to the sweet and simple "nursling," or rather, whether by any _true_ poet it has been neglected. Cowper reminds us that in

"The spring and play-time of the year"

the village-wife and her little ones go forth to

"Prank their hair with daisies."

James Montgomery, whose admiration of nature is somewhat frigid, can yet remind us that--

"The rose has but a summer reign,
The daisy never dies."

Chaucer warms into enthusiasm when he thinks of its pastoral, innocent gracefulness ("simplex munditiis"):--

"So glad am I when in the Daisy's presence,
That I am fain to do her reverence;
For she of all sweet flowers is the flower
With virtue filled, and honourable power;
For ever fair alike, and fresh of hue,
As well in winter as in summer new."

Let us not omit a reference to quaint but genial William Browne:--

"The Daisie, scattered on each meade and down,
A golden tuft within a silver crowne:
Fair fall that dainty flower! and may there be
No shepherd graced that does not honour thee!"

Yes! let no poet be taken to your heart of hearts who has no love for the "flower white and rede,"--in French, called "La Belle Marguerite,"--

"The op'ning gowan, wet wi' dew,"

--Burns's "bonnie gem,"--the flower of the meadow and the lea, of the woodland and the vale.

A modest, unassuming flower, destined to be trodden under the feet of the thoughtless, it withstands the rigorous breath of winter, is beautiful throughout the circle of the year--_Bellis perennis_, as the Swedish botanist not infelicitously called it. Its vegetation is arrested only during the harshest frosts; but it resumes its living growth as soon as it becomes sensible of the first rays of the spring-time sun.

It is at the moment of nature's awakening, about "the solemn Easter-tide," that this "sweet nursling of the vernal year" displays all the simple coquettishness of its chaplet of flowers,--that chaplet which has also procured for it the name of the tiny "Marguerite,"--that is, "little pearl,"--a name which the French have adopted from the Latin--_Margarita_.

Here let us pause, and propound a question.

How would you propose to test the real character, the genuine nature, of friend or acquaintance?

Your answers, dear readers (believe me, I hear them clearly!), are very various. Some of you say, that the best means of sounding the depths of the human heart is by bringing before it a misery which needs to be relieved. Others recommend the bestowal of a benefit. But such processes of analysis appear to me far from being infallible; too wide a margin is left for the operation of sentiments of pride or vanity. Why not conduct the man whose real character you wish to discover into a meadow enamelled with sparkling daisies? Thus you would impose upon nature the task of interrogating him. If he manifest feelings of indifference, you will do well to regard him with suspicion: take care how you admit him into your intimacy; for his heart must be cold, and his mind troubled--

"The man that takes not daisies to his soul
Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils."

But to return to our daisy. Observe how, by its organs, it yields itself--in anticipation, as it were--to its fate. And, first, its long and fibrous roots anchor it so solidly in the soil that the cattle which browse it cannot tear it up. Next, its stem is so short that it seems to be blended with the roots; one might almost doubt whether any existed. But, if you look at it more closely, you may readily assure yourself that the stem is the point whence issue the recumbent branches which bear the leaves. Why does not the daisy boast of stems erect and free? Would they not be incessantly bent or broken by the merry troops of children who love to play and dance upon Nature's carpet, the soft green sward?

* * * * *

The leaves of our daisy, then, seem to issue directly from the roots, without the intermediary of an _apparent_ stem, which must not be confounded--recollect this, dear reader!--with the stalk or peduncle that bears the crown of petals. These leaves in form resemble tiny crenelated spatules, with the handles flattened, and the edges trimmed with little hairs or fibres. The peduncle, too, seems to start immediately from the roots. The principal part of the peduncle is surmounted, as already hinted, by the flower, to which we next direct our inquisitive and searching gaze.

What shall we call it? To what shall we liken it? To a gilded button framed in a pearl. This button, this "yellow eye," as Tabernæmontanus, a botanist of the sixteenth century, named it,--the "eye of day" of our old poets,--a drop of gold in a rim of silver,--is not like any other flower; is quite a world or system of Lilliputian blossoms, each of which is represented by a miniature tube, yellow at the summit, and of a greenish white at the base,--the said tube being the union, or combination, of the tops or summits forming the central gem, the gilded button, the drop of gold. You may readily note this arrangement in the larger variety of daisy, the _Chrysanthemum leucanthum_ of Linnæus,--two Latinised Greek words which signify, literally, "golden-blossomed white flower."

If you doubt whether each of these tiny tubes be a flower, you have only to analyse them with the assistance of your ever-useful lens. The analysis of one will suffice; for all the others resemble it. Now, with your penknife, split the tube throughout its entire length: you will thus lay bare all the parts which enter into the composition of a veritable flower, commencing with the most conspicuous. Through the magnifying glass you can see five stamens,--free as regards their short filaments, but united by their elongated anthers; a characteristic which gives name to the great family of the _Synantheraceæ_, of which family our daisy is an honoured member;--a bifid (_i.e._, cloven in two) style traversing the middle of the anthers, which form for it a kind of sheath (see Fig. 31, _a_);--a monopetalous, tubular, and obscurely bilabiated (two-lipped) corolla, inserted at the summit of an unilocular (one-lobed) ovary, which is attached to the calyx (see Fig. 31, _b_). In these tiny flowers, then, which we call in Latin _flosculi_, in French _fleurons_, in English _florets_, nothing is deficient. As they are shaped like tubes, we call them, by way of distinction, _tubulifloral_.

But what are these white rays, lightly shaded with pink, which enclose or encircle the florets? (See Fig. 32, _a_.) Examine them at their points of insertion. You will perceive there some traces of reproductive organs, among which the style is most prominent. As for the corolla, it is represented only by its brown lip, which is immeasurably developed. It is this exaggerated development which constitutes the _white rays_, or petals, that prove so attractive to the eye. (See Fig. 32, _b_.) Do not forget to observe, by the way, that they are rose-tinted only on the side which directly undergoes the action of the light. To distinguish them from the tubular florets,--the _tubulifloræ_,--these "white rays" have been called _ligulate florets_, or _ligulifloræ_.

The complete flowers (or the florets) and the rays (or partially abortive flowers) form, in their aggregate, what our botanists have agreed to call an _inflorescence of the capitula_. Disposed quincuncially on an ovoid receptacle, or _phoranth_, both are grouped (Fig. 32, _c_) in alternating rows.

To explain thoroughly this species of inflorescence, we will venture upon an hypothesis. Let us suppose that we could elongate the said ovoid receptacle as if it were a ball of wax,--it would be changed into a sheath-like inflorescence; all our smaller florets, whose union composes what is improperly called the _flower_ of the daisy, would be ranged around an elongated, instead of being placed upon a flattened axis. This axis characterises all the Synantheraceæ of the family of the Compositæ (a sub-order); sometimes naked, sometimes garnished with varied hairs, either shrunken or persistent, it has furnished several characters useful in the classification of genera and species. But possessed with a mania for complicating everything, botanists designate it indifferently _receptacle_, _phoranthe_, _clinanthe_, etc. Why not employ one and the same word to distinguish one and the same thing? Why not have preserved the name _axis_, and have attached to it such qualifying terms as might be necessary to indicate simple differences of forms?

* * * * *

The ancients looked upon nature,--I cannot sufficiently insist upon this theme,--with quite other eyes than we do. The study and description of characters, so indispensable to our classifications and nomenclatures, appeared to them a useless labour; they had not even an idea of its value. But it was of signal importance to them to investigate the virtues and properties of plants, so far as they might be rendered available for the preservation of health and the cure of disease.

Our daisy is common in Greece. Theophrastus, therefore, ought to have known it, though he does not refer to it. It is common also in the plains of Italy. Pliny was the first to describe it, under the name of _bellis_; he attributes to it the properties of the St John's wort.[44] And it is noteworthy that the daisy belongs to the same family as the latter; a circumstance certainly not known in the days of Pliny.

The botanists of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are by no means niggards in the eulogiums which they lavish on the medicinal properties of our graceful Synantheracea. Bock (better known, perhaps, under the name of _Tragus_, a Goat), who mistook the yellow anthers for the seeds, recommended the leaves of the _Gänzeblume_ (goose-flower, as he called it) as a laxative. Tabernæmontanus prescribed them as a remedy for cramps in the stomach and the spitting of blood.

Ray, who expresses his astonishment that the Greeks had not spoken of it, looked upon the daisy as an excellent vulnerary. "Externally," says he, "we employ it with success in the form either of a poultice or a fomentation; for internal treatment, we mix its juice with vulnerary potions."--These properties procured it the name of _Consolida minor_, which would make it the pendant of the larger Consolida, _Symphytum officinale_, a species of the Boraginaceæ, very common in damp and shady localities.

Ruel recommended cataplasms of daisies and cowslips for gout and scrofulous tumours. Chomel affirmed that he knew by experience that the flowers of the daisy and the _herb robert_[45] (_Geranium Robertianum_), if dried in a hot dish, and applied to the head, considerably relieved headache.[46]

Wepfer set great value on a mixture of daisy, cress, and rummularia in the treatment of pneumonia; and Michaelis assures us that he had cured dropsies by the use of the flowers of the daisy cooked as a broth.

Tournefort, who was very partial to this kind of observation,--now repudiated by our botanists,--says, that the daisy, taken as a warm drink or a decoction, quickens the blood when congealed by a very severe attack of cold, as happens in pneumonia; it removes obstructions, facilitates the circulation, and gives the fibres an opportunity of recovering their elasticity.[47]

Garidel sums up in the following words the result of his personal observations:--"I have frequently remarked that the juice of the daisy acts as a laxative, and even as a purgative; the decoction does not have that effect so often as Schroeder observes, who says that mothers frequently give the leaves as a gentle aperient to their children.... Care should be taken not to administer this remedy indifferently to all pleuretics, nor at any season; for if we give it when the expectoration is easy, we run the risk, by the employment of a laxative at a wrong time, of spoiling everything, and checking the expectoration. This I have seen occur in several cases, where the remedy had been administered by a hermit."[48]

Can it be true that the commonest plants are the most useful? Nature is quite capable of affording us these surprises; nature, who, by her shifting and proteiform movements, never ceases to laugh at human theories. But men, as was said long ago, have eyes, though not to see; and everybody also knows, from his own experience, that he has ears, not to understand!

However this may be, the daisy, which, as we have seen, was formerly so extolled for its officinal properties, is now-a-days completely ignored by physicians. What, then, are we to conclude? That all the remedies in vogue--melancholy to confess!--are an affair of fashion. When men shall have resumed perukes, and women abandoned chignons for furbelows, we shall remember, perhaps, the virtues of the lowly, tender daisy.

We cannot take leave of our favourite wild-flower without repeating Wordsworth's beautiful stanzas. He takes as his motto a fine passage from Wither, quaint old George Wither:--

"Her [the Muse's] divine skill taught me this,
That from everything I saw
I could some instruction draw,
And raise pleasure to the height
Through the meanest object's sight.
By the murmur of a spring
Or the least bough's rustelling;
By a daisy whose leaves spread
Shut when Titan goes to bed;...
She could more infuse in me
Than all Nature's beauties can
In some other wiser man."

On this hint our great meditative poet speaks, and speaks most tenderly and truly:--

"In youth from rock to rock I went,
From hill to hill, in discontent
Of pleasure high and turbulent,
Most pleased when most uneasy;
But now my own delights I make,--
My thirst at every rill can slake,
And gladly Nature's love partake
Of thee, sweet daisy!...

"By violets in their secret mews
The flowers the wanton zephyrs choose;
Proud be the rose, with rains and dews
Her head impearling;
Thou liv'st with less ambitious aim,
Yet hast not gone without thy fame;
Thou art, indeed, by many a claim,
The poet's darling.

"If to a rock from rains he fly,
Or, some bright day of April sky,
Imprison'd by hot sunshine lie,
Near the green holly,
And wearily at length should fare;
He need but look about, and there
Thou art! a friend at hand, to scare
His melancholy.

"A hundred times, by rock or bower,
Ere thus I have lain couch'd an hour,
Have I derived from thy sweet power
Some apprehension;
Some steady love; some brief delight;
Some memory that had taken flight;
Some chime of fancy, wrong or right,
Or stray invention....

"Oft do I sit by thee at ease,
And weave a web of similes,
Loose types of things through all degrees.
Thoughts of thy raising;
And many a fond and idle name
I give to thee, for praise or blame,
As is the humour of the game,
While I am gazing.

"A nun demure, of lowly port,
Or sprightly maiden of Love's court,
In thy simplicity the sport
Of all temptations;
A queen in crown of rubies dress'd;
A starveling in a scanty vest;
Are all, as seem to suit thee best,
Thy appellations.

"A little cyclops, with one eye
Staring to threaten and defy,--
That thought comes next; and instantly
The freak is over;
The shape will vanish, and, behold!
A silver shield with boss of gold,
That spreads itself, some fairy bold
In fight to cover.

"I see thee glittering from afar,
And there thou art a pretty star;
Not quite so fair as many are
In heaven above thee!
Yet like a star, with glittering crest,
Self-pois'd in air, thou seem'st to rest:
May peace come never to his breast
Who shall reprove thee!"

We may add that we know but of four references to the daisy in Shakspeare. In _Cymbeline_, act iv., scene 2:--

"Let us
Find out the prettiest daisied plot we can."

In _Love's Labour's Lost_, act v., scene 2:--

"Where daisies pied[49] and violets blue
Do paint the meadows with delight."

Again, in _Hamlet_, act iv., scene 7:--

"There with fantastic garlands did she come
Of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples."

And, lastly, in _Hamlet_, act iv., scene 5:--

"There's a daisy; I would give you some violets, but they
withered all when my father died."

In Milton there are but two allusions. In the Masque of _Comus_:--

"By dimpled brook and fountain-brim,
The wood-nymphs, deck'd with daisies trim,
Their merry wakes and pastimes keep."

And in _L'Allegro_:[50]--

"Meadows trim with daisies pied."

THE TULIP.

"The pied windflowers and the tulip tall."

--SHELLEY.

It is probable that, for the majority of floral amateurs, the name of the tulip is inseparable from a plant which, with the hyacinth and the lily, becomes, in the merry spring-time, the ornament of our gardens. Yet, towards the end of March, the observer will occasionally discover, in the woods and groves, the _wild tulip_,[51] the _Tulipa sylvestris_ of Linnæus, which may, perhaps, be very properly taken for the type of a small tribe of the Liliaceæ. It is easily recognised by its flower, which resembles a large yellow campanula, slightly green on the exterior. Like all plants of the same family, it has but a single floral envelope or perianth, which may be either a corolla or a calyx as you will. The initiated protest and asseverate that it is a calyx; but the _profanum vulgus_, who compose the majority, will have it to be a corolla, on account of its colouring. To cut the knot, and please all parties, our beautiful floral envelope has been denominated a _petaloid perianth_.

The divisions of this perianth, six in number, may, in truth, be considered as _petals_; they are detached down to the base, and full in proportion as the pistil is developed. The latter is composed of three stigmata, attached, without the intermediary of a stylus (sessile stigmata), to a free ovary (that is, an ovary not joined to the perianth), which, as it develops, forms a capsule with three angular projections marking so many lobes; each of these lobes includes a great number of compressed seeds. As in all the Liliaceæ, and in many other vegetable families, the stamens, six in number, are _hypogynous_,--that is to say, inserted at the base of the division of the perianth. The stem, nearly two feet in height, bears a single flower only: the leaves are lanceolate, like all of the family, and the root is formed of a bulb, with thin and brownish-coloured external _tunicæ_.

Is the wild tulip an original species, or only a degenerate variety of the cultivated tulip (_Tulipa Gesneriana_)? The question is one not very easily solved.

It is generally admitted that the cultivated tulip,--which everybody knows,--was introduced into Europe from the East, towards the middle of the sixteenth century. It is, at all events, certain that none of our older botanists speak of our wild tulip. Dodonnée himself refers to the Eastern tulip only, of which he was the first to give, in his "Historia Stirpium," a tolerable delineation.

A circumstance which would favour the belief that the tulip was imported from the East is the Oriental derivation of its name: _tulipa_, in Italian _tulipano_, comes to us, it is said, from the Turkish _tuliband_, or the Persian _dulbend_, whence is obtained, by corruption, _turban_, the characteristic head-gear of the Orientals. Thus, at bottom, _tulip_ and _turban_ are the same word, only altered in form.

* * * * *

Who does not know with what a glory of colours the skill of our horticulturists has succeeded in clothing the tulip?

Inasmuch as the cultivated species bears the distinctive addition of _Gesneriana_,--and of this species all existing tulips are but varieties,--we might reasonably suppose that Gesner, the celebrated Swiss naturalist (who died at Zurich, aged sixty-nine, in 1565), was the first to speak of it. But he makes no allusion to it in his "Historia Plantarum" (printed at Bâle in 1541); he only refers to it in his "Additions" to the works of Valerius Cordus, published in 1561.

We subjoin a literal translation of the words of Conrad Gesner:--

"In the year 1559, at the beginning of April, I saw at Augsburg, in the garden of F. H. Herwart, magistrate of that town, a plant whose seed had been brought from Constantinople, or, according to some, from Cappadocia. It was called _tulip_."

About the same epoch, this plant was cultivated at Vienna, in the gardens of some wealthy amateurs; whence several tulip-bulbs were afterwards sent into England.

This ornamental plant, whose splendour is of such brief duration, became, towards the middle of the sixteenth century, the object of a commercial speculation, which marks an epoch in horticultural annals. The towns of Amsterdam, Haarlem, Utrecht, Alkmar, Leyden, and Rotterdam, were the head-quarters of the new trade.

The years 1634 to 1637 marked its apogee, its culmination; it was the reign of the _tulipomania_,--a malady which, notwithstanding its severity, does not figure among our pathological nomenclatures. Bulbs of the variety called _Viceroy_ were sold for 3000 florins (£235) each; and amateurs paid even as high as 5000 florins (£430) for the _Semper Augustus_ variety! Those who had not the needful amount of ready money disposed of their goods, their cattle, and their furniture. And not only the horticulturists, but the seamen, and artisans, and servants, plunged headlong, into this frantic gambling. Tulip bulbs were then as eagerly sought after as shares in the company of the Mississippi in the days of Law,--or in the South Sea Stocks, also set afloat by that ingenious financier.

But it was not so much a love of flowers as a lust of speculation which lay at the bottom of this famous mania. For example, a gentleman engaged a merchant to deliver, at the end of six months, a bulb worth 1000 florins. When the time came, the price of the bulb had either gone up or down, and the contractor paid only the difference; as for delivering the wares, neither party cared about it. It was, therefore, the exact equivalent of a speculation in the funds or in railway shares. The transactions took place on the public exchanges, as well as in coffee-houses, inns, and on the promenades. They originated a fertile crop of abuses, and to put an end to them the intervention of the Government was required.

However, we may cite several examples of distinguished men who have cherished a partiality for the tulip, in the better sense of the word. Among these was Justus Lipsius, the great philologist. In his garden he cultivated with his own hands, it is said, the rarest varieties, and his floricultural tastes were shared by two of his intimate friends, Dodonée (Diodati) and L'Écluse, the two most illustrious botanists of their time.

But all these details, however curious and interesting, do not teach us whether our wild tulip has sprung from the cultivated germs. As it is impossible to solve this problem experimentally, we are forced to be satisfied with a simple conjecture.

And, for our own part, we are strongly of opinion that the wild and cultivated tulips may, from their very origin, have co-existed independently of one another. And now to put forward a fact in support of this statement.

THE HELIOTROPE.

With the Heliotrope every lover of flowers is familiar; it is not less prized for its delicate fragrance than the tulip for its glowing colours. No doubt exists as to the country from which we have imported the cultivated heliotrope, nor as to the epoch when it was introduced: it came from Peru, whence the name given to it by Linnæus, _Heliotropium Peruvianium_; and was brought into Europe, in 1740, by Joseph de Jussieu. Although not known in Europe above a hundred and thirty years, it is now an "old, familiar face" in every garden. Now, by the side of the cultivated species, a native of the New World, we can place a wild variety, indigenous to the Old World, common in our own country, and, indeed, in all the countries of temperate Europe; whence it has received the appellation of _Heliotropium Europæum_.

The European species, let me state, is in every respect similar to the Peruvian species, except that its flowers are inodorous and of a paler blue. Yet it was known before the discovery of America,--before the discovery of those regions from which we have obtained the cultivated heliotrope. Thus, the two varieties have existed contemporaneously, and have flourished independently of each other, from their very origin. Why should not such be the case with the wild and cultivated tulip?

THE ANEMONES.

From our Spring posy the delicate Anemones must not be omitted. More than twenty species are cultivated in Great Britain, and I hardly know to which I would give the preference. They are called by that most unmeaning term, "florist's flowers," and from the attention bestowed upon them, the cultivated varieties have been greatly improved. But you and I, dear reader, will go forth into the "wild woods," and enjoy the rich gifts of nature untampered by horticultural science. It is towards the end of March that the wood anemone (_Anemone nemorosa_) begins to expand its graceful leaves and snow-white buds to the stray sunbeams that force their way through the embowering branches of stately elms and spreading beeches, and in April it has attained its full glory, contributing largely to the beauty and the show which then embellish the forest glade. Snow-white, and faint rose-red, and soft delicate lilac,--these are the prevailing hues of its tender petals.

It is said that the wood anemone never blossoms earlier than March 16, and never later than April 2. It opens out its loveliness to the sun about the same time as the swallow returns from the genial South to our land of pleasant verdure. Country children associate it with the appearance of the cuckoo, and call it the "cuckoo flower," but the "wandering voice" is later than the woodland blossom in its welcome to the spring.

Why is it called _Anemone_? Of course, the English name is derived from the Greek άνεμος, "wind;" but what connexion is there between the wind and the flower? Credulous old Pliny asserted that it never bloomed except when the wind blew. Some of our botanical writers explain that it shivers and bends before the winds of March and the breezes of April. Others remind us that though generally found in the shelter of the groves, it will thrive lustily in windy and exposed localities. But I suspect the true reason of the name is its peculiar sensitiveness to atmospheric changes. As a foreteller of the storm it is not less trustworthy than a barometer, never failing to fold up its exquisite petals when the winds are gathering over the distant hills.

Our plant is considered injurious food for cattle; and it was on account of its unwholesome properties, perhaps, that the Egyptians regarded it as an emblem of sickness; or the idea may have been suggested by its frail and feeble appearance.

The yellow wood anemone is a rare and beautiful variety, which I have sometimes met with among the chalky downs of Kent. Its botanical designation is _Anemone ranunculoides_.

A still richer species is the _Anemone pulsatilla_, or Pasque Flower Anemone; a silky downy plant, easily recognised by its blossom of glowing purple. The blue mountain anemone (_Anemone Apennina_) is only to be found, as its name indicates, on the bold rugged sides of lofty mountain-heights.

The Anemones belong to a very important order,--the _Ranunculaceæ_, or Crowfoot family,--which is divided into five sub-orders: 1. Clematidæ; 2. Anemoneæ; 3. Ranunculaceæ; 4. Helliboreæ; and 5. Actœæ, or Pœniæ. Linnæus distinguishes forty-one known genera, comprising a thousand species. There are nine British genera of Anemoneæ.

In Drayton's "Poly-Olbion" occurs a rich descriptive passage,--an exquisite "flower-piece,"--which, on account of its beauty, deserves to be better known, and more frequently quoted. The poet is enlarging upon the floral rites which were celebrated at the espousals of the rivers Thame and Isis, and sets before us a bright bevy of Nymphs and Naiads; engaged in twining "dainty chaplets" to deck the persons of the bride and bridegroom. The stalwart Thame,--so it seems to them,--should not be "dressed with flowers to gardens that belong," but with blossoms plucked from his own meads and pastures. As most of those selected are fit for a spring-time nosegay, we may well enrich our pages with quaint old Drayton's enumeration of them:--

"The Primrose placing first, because that in the Spring
It is the first appears; then only flourishing;
The azured Harebell next with them they neatly mixt,
T' allay whose luscious smell they Woodbine placed betwixt.
Among those things of scent there prick they in the Lily,
And near to that again her sister Daffodilly.
To sort these flowers of show with others that were sweet,
The Cowslip there they couch, and the Oxlip for her meet;
The Columbine amongst them they sparingly do set,
The yellow King-cup, wrought in many a curious fret;[52]
And now and then among, of Eglantine a spray,
By which again a course of Lady-mocks they lay;
The Crow-flower, and thereby the Clorra-flower they stick,
The Daisy over all those sundry sweets so thick,
As Nature doth herself to imitate her right;
Who seems in that her 'pearl' so greatly to delight,
That every plain therewith she powdereth to behold.
The crimson Darnel-flower, the Blue-bottle and gold,
Which, though esteemed but weeds, yet, for their dainty hues,
And for their scent, not ill, they for their purpose choose.
Thus, having told you how the Bridegroom Thames was drest,
I'll show you how the Bride, fair Isis, they invest."

Here the poet resorts to the garden for his decorative wreath, but is careful, as we shall see, to eschew "florist's flowers," and to select only our dear old favourites:--

"The red, the dainty white, the gaudy Damask Rose,
The brave Carnation, then, of sweet and sovereign power
(So of his colour called, although a July flower),
With the other of his kind, the speckled and the pale;
Then the odoriferous Pink that sends forth such a gale
Of sweetness, yet in scents as various as in sorts;
The purple Violet then the Pansy there supports;
The Marigold above t' adorn the arched bar;
The double Daisy, Thrift, the Button-Bachelor;
Sweet William, Sops in Wine, the Campion, and to these
Some Lavender they put, and Rosemary, and Bays;
Sweet Marjoram with her like, sweet Basil rare for smell,
With many a flower whose name were now too long to tell."

If our space permitted, we should like to gossip awhile about each of the flowers commemorated by our old poet, for to each attaches some legend, or romantic tradition, some rural observance, or sweet poetical association. But we must continue our researches, and they bring us now to the _Arum_.

THE ARUM.

To the French the Arum is commonly known as the Calf's foot (_Pied de veau_). It is a common enough plant, growing on the borders of the wood, and delighting especially in the shade of the hazel trees, but it bears not the slightest resemblance to the hoof of any quadruped whatsoever, unless, indeed, to a very fervid imagination there should be visible a shadowy similitude in its leaf.

And it is, in truth, asserted--but, not having the eye of faith, the editor cannot see any ground for the assertion--that its sagillate or arrow-headed leaves, marked by a strongly-defined midrib, bear a certain likeness to the "under bi-ungulated face" of the foot of a young ruminant. Appearing in the early days of spring, they contrast agreeably, by their shining verdure, with the colour of the dead leaves heaped up at the base of the hedgerows. Simultaneously with its leaves comes forth a curious organ,--rare in vegetables of temperate regions, common in the tropical palms, and characteristic of the family of the Aroidaceæ, to which our Arum belongs. This organ, rolled up in a coil or spiral, is named the _spathe_. It protects the flowers in their young state, and, as they are developed, gradually falls off. Its colour is a greenish yellow; at the summit it is sometimes streaked with purplish veins, and at the base it swells out in a globose fashion.

A small thermometer, introduced into the interior of the rolled-up spathe, indicates a rise of temperature equal to one or two degrees above that of the external atmosphere. Whence comes this difference? Because in the spathe is frequently found imprisoned another organ, the seat of the mystery of reproduction. This organ is a fleshy axis, on which are arranged the flowers in two distinct rings; the upper is occupied by the stamens, reduced to simple anthers (sessile stamens); observe the filamentous appendages--they are abortive ovaries. These same appendages also surmount the lower ring, where several rows are set of sessile ovaries; each ovary composed of a single lobe, containing a very small number of ovules, the majority of which miscarry as the ovaries become metamorphosed into bright red berries: these are the fruits which appear in autumn; they form a spike or ear of coral, each containing, ordinarily, a single seed. The flowers, as a consequence of this separation of the two sexes, are _monœcious_; the succulent axis which bears them is called a spadix.[53] On tearing open the spathe, our glance first rests upon the apex of the spadix, which has a club-like form, and is of a beautiful violet-red colour. The two rings of sexual organs have much less attraction for the profane; the lower ring, loaded with female flowers, is more prominent than the upper ring, which bears the male flowers.

The root of our Arum also deserves a particular examination. It is a white tubercular stock or stem, containing a quantity of fecula, mixed, as in the West Indian manioc, with an acrid poisonous principle which produces a burning painful heat in the throat. This injurious principle is destroyed by exposure to the fire, and by repeatedly boiling the plant in water. After being thus heated, there remains only the fecula, in the form of a white powder, which, in times of scarcity, supplies a very nutritious food. "I made use of it," says Bosc, "during the storms of the Revolution, when I had taken refuge in the solitudes of the forest of Montmorency. This plant is so abundant in this forest, and in many other localities, that, at the epoch I speak of, it would have ensured the subsistence of several thousands of men, if they had known its alimentary properties. I was seriously counting on the resources which it would place at my disposal, when the death of Robespierre relieved me from my difficulties."[54]

Our _arum_, which we have taken as a type of the family of the Aroidaceæ, is called _maculatum_, or "spotted," in allusion to the white and violet spots with which its leaves are besprinkled.

Another, and not less interesting species, is the _Arum arisarum_. (See Fig. 34, _a_.) It loves to display its exquisite leafage on the rocks bordering the "sea-marge," and is found in profusion along almost the entire littoral of the Mediterranean. It is a precocious flower--making its appearance about the end of December, and flourishing until the beginning of Spring. The spathe, which in the _Arum maculatum_ has all the aspect of an etiolated leaf, assumes, in the _Arum arisarum_, the tints of a corolla,--is of a beautiful warm red violet, streaked with white. The fleshy axis, which ought rather to be called gynandrous (both male and female) than a spadix, is of a red colour; naked in its upper portion, which terminates with a kind of apple. It would remind a drummer-boy of the formidable staff carried by his drum-major (see Fig. 34, _b_.); the stamens, reduced to the condition of bilobed anthers, are mounted around the central part; and the ovaries, less numerous than the stamens, occupy the base of the axis. Each monocular ovary is crowned by a sessile stigma, and each lobe contains a great number of erect ovules. In the _Arum maculatum_, the number of ovules does not exceed six. Some botanists have laid hold of this characteristic as an excuse for withdrawing the Mediterranean species from the _arums_, and creating a new genus, _arisarum_. The variety we have just described is, in that case, denominated the _Arisarum vulgare_.

* * * * *

The ancients have mentioned numerous species of the _arum_. But it is a very difficult task to bring their nomenclature into any kind of agreement with the species described by modern botanists. However, we may, I think, regard the _arisarum_ of Pliny and Dioscorides as positively identical with our _Arum arisarum_. But we are unable to admit that the _aron_, the _hepha_, the _dracunculus_, the _dracontium_, can be, as commentators represent, one and the same plant; still less can we admit that this plant is our _Arum maculatum_, which is very much rarer in the south than in the north and centre of Europe. In the solution of such problems as these, geographical botany is an element which must not be neglected. Unfortunately it has never been taken into account by the commentators on the great classical authorities.

Let me advance a simple proposition. Since the potatoe has become diseased, and the species tends to degenerate, may we not find a substitute for it,--at least, a partial one,--among our Aroids, and, notably, in the _Arum maculatum_?

THE RANUNCULACEÆ.

Let us return for a while to the order of Ranunculaceæ, of which the Anemones have already furnished us with a specimen. Several very poisonous plants are members of this order; and, in truth, very few can be pronounced wholly innocent. I do not think there is much harm in the _Lesser Celandine_, however--the glossy, starry flower, yellow as a buttercup, with heart-shaped leaves, which Wordsworth has celebrated:--

"Ere a leaf is on the bush,
In the time before the thrush
Has a thought about its nest,
Thou wilt come with half a call,
Spreading out thy glossy breast,
Like a careless prodigal;
Telling tales about the sun,
When we've little warmth or none."

There cannot be much harm in it, for in the north of Europe the peasantry boil its leaves, and eat them as greens. It thrives in all parts of England, in green woods and meadows, and on wild furzy wastes and open commons; under leafy hedges, and even in the gay pastures, among the primroses and hepaticas. A number of small, grain-like tubers lie around it, close to the surface of the earth; whence it was a common saying in "the days of old" that this plant showered down wheat in its vicinity.

* * * * *

To the same order belongs the _Buttercup_ (_Ranunculus bulbosus_), whose bulbous root procured for it from our forefathers the name of "St Anthony's turnip."

If the good saint ever partook of buttercup-corms, we do not envy him his sensations; when boiled, they disorder the stomach, and if eaten raw, act as an emetic.