Proserpina Volume I Part 7

And recollect that a sceptre is properly a staff to lean upon; and that as a crown or diadem is first a binding thing, a 'sceptre' is first a _supporting_ thing, and it is in its n.o.bleness, itself made of the stem of a young tree. You may just as well learn also this:

"[Greek: Nai ma tode skeptron, to men oupote phulla kai ozous]

[Greek: Phusei, epeide prota tomen en oressi leloipen,]

[Greek: Oud' anathelesei; peri gar rha he chalkos elepse]

[Greek: Phulla te kai phloion; nun aute min huies Achaion]

[Greek: En palameis ph.o.r.eousi dikaspoloi, hoi te themistas]

[Greek: Pros Dios eiruatai;]"

"Now, by this sacred sceptre hear me swear Which never more shall leaves or blossoms bear, Which, severed from the trunk, (as I from thee,) On the bare mountains left its parent tree; This sceptre, formed by tempered steel to prove An ensign of the delegates of Jove, From whom the power of laws and justice springs (Tremendous oath, inviolate to Kings)."

13. The supporting power in the tree itself is, I doubt not, greatly increased by this spiral action; and the fine {138} instinct of its being so, caused the twisted pillar to be used in the Lombardic Gothic,--at first, merely as a pleasant variety of form, but at last constructively and universally, by Giotto, and all the architects of his school. Not that the spiral form actually adds to the strength of a Lombardic pillar, by imitating contortions of wood, any more than the fluting of a Doric shaft adds to its strength by imitating the ca.n.a.liculation of a reed; but the perfect action of the imagination, which had adopted the encircling acanthus for the capital, adopted the twining stemma for the shaft; the pure delight of the eye being the first condition in either case: and it is inconceivable how much of the pleasure taken both in ornament and in natural form is founded elementarily on groups of spiral line. The study in our fifth plate, of the involucre of the waste-thistle,[38] is as good an example as I can give of the more subtle and concealed conditions of this structure.

14. Returning to our present business of nomenclature, we find the Greek word, 'stemma,' adopted by the Latins, {139} becoming the expression of a growing and hereditary race; and the branched tree, the natural type, among all nations, of multiplied families. Hence the entire fitness of the word for our present purposes; as signifying, "a spiral shoot extending itself by branches." But since, unless it is spiral, it is not a stem, and unless it has branches, it is not a stem, we shall still want another word for the sustaining 'sceptre' of a foxglove, or cowslip. Before determining that, however, we must see what need there may be of one familiar to our ears until lately, although now, I understand, falling into disuse.

15. By our definition, a stem is a spirally bent, essentially living and growing, shoot of vegetation. But the branch of a tree, in which many such stems have their origin, is not, except in a very subtle and partial way, spiral; nor, except in the shoots that spring from it, progressive forwards; it only receives increase of thickness at its sides. Much more, what used to be called the _trunk_ of a tree, in which many branches are united, has ceased to be, except in mere tendency and temper, spiral; and has so far ceased from growing as to be often in a state of decay in its interior, while the external layers are still in serviceable strength.

16. If, however, a trunk were only to be defined as an arrested stem, or a cl.u.s.ter of arrested stems, we might perhaps refuse, in scientific use, the popular word. But such a definition does not touch the main idea. Branches usually begin to a.s.sert themselves at a height above the {140} ground approximately fixed for each species of tree,--low in an oak, high in a stone pine; but, in both, marked as a point of _structural change in the direction of growing force_, like the spring of a vault from a pillar; and as the tree grows old, some of its branches getting torn away by winds or falling under the weight of their own fruit, or load of snow, or by natural decay, there remains literally a 'truncated' ma.s.s of timber, still bearing irregular branches here and there, but inevitably suggestive of resemblance to a human body, after the loss of some of its limbs.

And to prepare trees for their practical service, what age and storm only do partially, the first rough process of human art does completely. The branches are lopped away, leaving literally the 'truncus' as the part of the tree out of which log and rafter can be cut. And in many trees, it would appear to be the chief end of their being to produce this part of their body on a grand scale, and of n.o.ble substance; so that, while in thinking of vegetable life without reference to its use to men or animals, we should rightly say that the essence of it was in leaf and flower--not in trunk or fruit; yet for the sake of animals, we find that some plants, like the vine, are apparently meant chiefly to produce fruit; others, like laurels, chiefly to produce leaves; others chiefly to produce flowers; and others to produce permanently serviceable and sculptural wood; or, in some cases, merely picturesque and monumental ma.s.ses of vegetable rock, "intertwisted {141} fibres serpentine,"--of far n.o.bler and more pathetic use in their places, and their enduring age, than ever they could be for material purpose in human habitation. For this central ma.s.s of the vegetable organism, then, the English word 'trunk' and French 'tronc' are always in accurate scholars.h.i.+p to be retained--meaning the part of a tree which remains when its branches are lopped away.

17. We have now got distinct ideas of four different kinds of stem, and simple names for them in Latin and English,--Petiolus, Cymba, Stemma, and Truncus; Stalk, Leaf-stalk, Stem, and Trunk; and these are all that we shall commonly need. There is, however, one more that will be sometimes necessary, though it is ugly and difficult to p.r.o.nounce, and must be as little used as we can.

And here I must ask you to learn with me a little piece of Roman history. I say, to _learn_ with me, because I don't know any Roman history except the two first books of Livy, and little bits here and there of the following six or seven. I only just know enough about it to be able to make out the bearings and meaning of any fact that I now learn. The greater number of modern historians know, (if honest enough even for that,) the facts, or something that may possibly be like the facts, but haven't the least notion of the meaning of them. So that, though I have to find out everything that I want in Smith's dictionary, like any schoolboy, I can usually tell you the {142} significance of what I so find, better than perhaps even Mr.

Smith himself could.

18. In the 586th page of Mr. Smith's volume, you have it written that 'Calvus,' bald-head, was the name of a family of the Licinia gens; that the man of whom we hear earliest, as so named, was the first plebeian elected to military tribunes.h.i.+p in B.C. 400; and that the fourth of whom we hear, was surnamed 'Stolo,' because he was so particular in pruning away the Stolons (stolones), or useless young shoots, of his vines.

We must keep this word 'stolon,' therefore, for these young suckers springing from an old root. Its derivation is uncertain; but the main idea meant by it is one of uselessness,--sprouting without occasion or fruit; and the words 'stolidus' and 'stolid' are really its derivatives, though we have lost their sense in English by partly confusing them with 'solid'

which they have nothing to do with. A 'stolid' person is essentially a 'useless sucker' of society; frequently very leafy and graceful, but with no good in him.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 15.]

19. Nevertheless, I won't allow our vegetable 'stolons' to be despised.

Some of quite the most beautiful forms of leaf.a.ge belong to them;--even the foliage of the olive itself is never seen to the same perfection on the upper branches as in the young ground-rods in which the dual groups of leaves crowd themselves in their haste into cl.u.s.ters of three.

But, for our point of Latin history, remember always {143} that in 400 B.C., just a year before the death of Socrates at Athens, this family of Stolid persons manifested themselves at Rome, shooting up from plebeian roots into places where they had no business; and preparing the way for the degradation of the entire Roman race under the Empire; their success being owed, remember also, to the faults of the patricians, for one of the laws pa.s.sed by Calvus Stolo was that the Sibylline books should be in custody of ten men, of whom five should be plebeian, "that no falsifications might be introduced in favour of the patricians."

20. All this time, however, we have got no name for the prettiest of all stems,--that of annual flowers growing high from among their ground leaves, like lilies of the valley, and saxifrages, and the tall primulas--of which this pretty type, Fig. 15, was cut for me by Mr. Burgess years ago; admirable in its light outline of the foamy globe of flowers, supported and balanced in the meadow breezes on that elastic rod of slenderest life.

What shall we call it? We had better rest from our study of terms a little, and do a piece of needful cla.s.sifying, before we try to name it.

21. My younger readers will find it easy to learn, and convenient to remember, for a beginning of their science, {144} the names of twelve great families of cinquefoiled flowers,[39] of which the first group of three, is for the most part golden, the second, blue, the third, purple, and the fourth, red.

And their names, by simple lips, can be pleasantly said, or sung, in this order, the two first only being a little difficult to get over.

1 2 3 4

Roof-foil, Lucy, Pea, Pink, Rock-foil, Blue-bell, Pansy, Peach, Primrose. Bindweed. Daisy. Rose.

Which even in their Latin magniloquence will not be too terrible, namely,--

1 2 3 4

Stella, Lucia, Alata, Clarissa, Francesca, Campanula, Viola, Persica, Primula. Convoluta. Margarita. Rosa.

22. I do not care much to a.s.sert or debate my reasons for the changes of nomenclature made in this list. The {145} most gratuitous is that of 'Lucy'

for 'Gentian,' because the King of Macedon, from whom the flower has been so long named, was by no means a person deserving of so consecrated memory.

I conceive no excuse needed for rejecting Caryophyll, one of the crudest and absurdest words ever coined by unscholarly men of science; or Papilionaceae, which is unendurably long for pease; and when we are now writing Latin, in a sentimental temper, and wish to say that we gathered a daisy, we shall not any more be compelled to write that we gathered a 'Bellidem perennem,' or, an 'Oculum Diei.'

I take the pure Latin form, Margarita, instead of Margareta, in memory of Margherita of Cortona,[40] as well as of the great saint: also the tiny scatterings and sparklings of the daisy on the turf may remind us of the old use of the word 'Margaritae,' for the minute particles of the Host sprinkled on the patina--"Has particulas [Greek: meridas] vocat Euchologium, [Greek: margaritas] Liturgia Chrysostomi."[41] My young German readers will, I hope, call the flower Gretschen,--unless they would uproot the daisies of the Rhine, lest French girls should also count their love-lots by the Marguerite. I must be so ungracious to my fair young readers, however, as to warn them that this trial of their lovers is a very favourable one, for, in nine blossoms out of {146} ten, the leaves of the Marguerite are odd, so that, if they are only gracious enough to begin with the supposition that he loves them, they must needs end in the conviction of it.

23. I am concerned, however, for the present, only with my first or golden order, of which the Roof-foil, or house-leek, is called in present botany, Sedum, 'the squatter,' because of its way of fastening itself down on stones, or roof, as close as it can sit. But I think this an ungraceful notion of its behaviour; and as its blossoms are, of all flowers, the most sharply and distinctly star-shaped, I shall call it 'Stella' (providing otherwise, in due time, for the poor little chickweeds;) and the common stonecrop will therefore be 'Stella domestica.'

The second tribe, (at present saxifraga,) growing for the most part wild on rocks, may, I trust, even in Protestant botany, be named Francesca, after St. Francis of a.s.sisi; not only for its modesty, and love of mountain ground, and poverty of colour and leaf; but also because the chief element of its decoration, seen close, will be found in its spots, or stigmata.

In the nomenclature of the third order I make no change.

24. Now all this group of golden-blossoming plants agree in general character of having a rich cl.u.s.ter of radical leaves, from which they throw up a single stalk bearing cl.u.s.tered blossoms; for which stalk, when entirely leafless, I intend always to keep the term 'virgula,' the {147} 'little rod'--not painfully caring about it, but being able thus to define it with precision, if required. And these are connected with the stems of branching shrubs through infinite varieties of structure, in which the first steps of transition are made by carrying the cl.u.s.ter of radical leaves up, and letting them expire gradually from the rising stem: the changes of form in the leaves as they rise higher from the ground being one of quite the most interesting specific studies in every plant. I had set myself once, in a bye-study for foreground drawing, hard on this point; and began, with Mr. Burgess, a complete a.n.a.lysis of the foliation of annual stems; of which Line-studies II., III., and IV., are examples; reduced copies, all, from the beautiful Flora Danica. But after giving two whole lovely long summer days, under the Giesbach, to the blue scabious, ('Devil's bit,') and getting in that time, only half-way up it, I gave in; and must leave the work to happier and younger souls.

25. For these flowering stems, therefore, possessing nearly all the complex organization of a tree, but not its permanence, we will keep the word 'virga;' and 'virgula' for those that have no leaves. I believe, when we come to the study of leaf-order, it will be best to begin with these annual virgae, in which the leaf has nothing to do with preparation for a next year's branch. And now the remaining terms commonly applied to stems may be for the most part dispensed with; but several are interesting, and must be examined before dismissal. {148}

26. Indeed, in the first place, the word we have to use so often, 'stalk,'

has not been got to the roots of, yet. It comes from the Greek [Greek: stelechos,] (stelechos,) the 'holding part' of a tree, that which is like a handle to all its branches; 'stock' is another form in which it has come down to us: with some notion of its being the mother of branches: thus, when Athena's olive was burnt by the Persians, two days after, a shoot a cubit long had sprung from the 'stelechos,' of it.

27. Secondly. Few words are more interesting to the modern scholarly and professorial mind than 'stipend.' (I have twice a year at present to consider whether I am worth mine, sent with compliments from the Curators of the University chest). Now, this word comes from 'stips,' small pay, which itself comes from 'stipo,' to press together, with the idea of small coin heaped up in little towers or piles. But with the idea of lateral pressing together, instead of downward, we get 'stipes,' a solid log; in Greek, with the same sense, [Greek: stupos,] (stupos,) whence, gradually, with help from another word meaning to beat, (and a side-glance at beating of hemp,) we get our 'stupid,' the German stumph, the Scottish sumph, and the plain English 'stump.'

Refining on the more delicate sound of stipes, the Latins got 'stipula,'

the thin stem of straw: which rustles and ripples daintily in verse, a.s.sociated with spica and spiculum, used of the sharp pointed ear of corn, and its fine processes of fairy shafts. {149}

28. There are yet two more names of stalk to be studied, though, except for particular plants, not needing to be used,--namely, the Latin cau-dex, and cau-lis, both connected with the Greek [Greek: kaulos], properly meaning a solid stalk like a handle, pa.s.sing into the sense of the hilt of a sword, or quill of a pen. Then, in Latin, caudex pa.s.ses into the sense of log, and so, of cut plank or tablet of wood; thus finally becoming the cla.s.sical 'codex' of writings engraved on such wooden tablets, and therefore generally used for authoritative ma.n.u.scripts.

Lastly, 'caulis,' retained accurately in our cauliflower, contracted in 'colewort,' and refined in 'kail,' softens itself into the French 'chou,'

meaning properly the whole family of thick-stalked eatable salads with spreading heads; but these being distinguished explicitly by Pliny as 'Capitati,' 'salads with a head,' or 'Captain salads,' the mediaeval French softened the 'caulis capitatus' into 'chou cabus;'--or, to separate the round or apple-like ma.s.s of leaves from the flowery foam, 'cabus' simply, by us at last enriched and emphasized into 'cabbage.'

29. I believe we have now got through the stiffest piece of etymology we shall have to master in the course of our botany; but I am certain that young readers will find patient work, in this kind, well rewarded by the groups of connected thoughts which will thus attach themselves to familiar names; and their grasp of every language they learn must only be esteemed by them secure when they recognize its derivatives in these homely a.s.sociations, {150} and are as much at ease with the Latin or French syllables of a word as with the English ones; this familiarity being above all things needful to cure our young students of their present ludicrous impression that what is simple, in English, is knowing, in Greek; and that terms constructed out of a dead language will explain difficulties which remained insoluble in a living one. But Greek is _not_ yet dead: while if we carry our unscholarly nomenclature much further, English soon will be; and then doubtless botanical gentlemen at Athens will for some time think it fine to describe what we used to call caryophyllaceae, as the [Greek: hedlephides].

30. For indeed we are all of us yet but school-boys, clumsily using alike our lips and brains; and with all our mastery of instruments and patience of attention, but few have reached, and those dimly, the first level of science,--wonder.

For the first instinct of the stem,--unnamed by us yet--unthought of,--the instinct of seeking light, as of the root to seek darkness,--what words can enough speak the wonder of it.

Look. Here is the little thing, Line-study V. (A), in its first birth to us: the stem of stems; the one of which we pray that it may bear our daily bread. The seed has fallen in the ground with the springing germ of it downwards; with heavenly cunning the taught stem curls round, and seeks the never-seen light. Veritable 'conversion,' miraculous, called of G.o.d. And here is the oat {151} germ, (B)--after the wheat, most vital of divine gifts; and a.s.suredly, in days to come, fated to grow on many a naked rock in hitherto lifeless lands, over which the glancing sheaves of it will shake sweet treasure of innocent gold.

And who shall tell us how they grow; and the fas.h.i.+on of their rustling pillars--bent, and again erect, at every breeze. Fluted shaft or cl.u.s.tered pier, how poor of art, beside this gra.s.s-shaft--built, first to sustain the food of men, then to be strewn under their feet!

We must not stay to think of it, yet, or we shall get no farther till harvest has come and gone again. And having our names of stems now determined enough, we must in next chapter try a little to understand the different kinds of them.

The following notes, among many kindly sent me on the subject of Scottish Heraldry, seem to be the most trustworthy:--