25. Brantwood, Easter Day, 1875.—I don't like to spoil my pretty sentence, above; but on reading it over, I suspect I wrote it confusing the water-lily leaf, and other floating ones of the same kind, with the Arethusan forms. But the water-lily and water-ranunculus leaves, and such others, are to the orders of earth-loving leaves what ducks and swans are to birds; (the swan is the water-lily of birds;) they are swimming leaves; not properly watery creatures, or able to live under water like fish, (unless

when dormant), but just like birds that pass their lives on the surface of the waves—though they must breathe in the air.

And these natant leaves, as they lie on the water surface, do not want strong ribs to carry them,[[20]] but have very delicate ones beautifully branching into the orbed space, to keep the tissue nice and flat; while, on the other hand, leaves that really have to grow under water, sacrifice their tissue, and keep only their ribs, like coral animals; ('Ranunculus heterophyllus,' 'other-leaved Frog-flower,' and its like,) just as, if you keep your own hands too long in water, they shrivel at the finger-ends.

26. So that you must not attach any great botanical importance to the characters of contrasted aspects in leaves, which I wish you to express by the words 'Apolline' and 'Arethusan'; but their mythic importance is very great, and your careful observance of it will help you completely to understand the beautiful Greek fable of Apollo and Daphne. There are indeed several Daphnes, and the first root of the name is far away in another field of thought altogether, connected with the Gods of Light. But etymology, the best of servants, is an unreasonable master; and Professor Max Müller trusts his deep-reaching knowledge of the first ideas connected with the names of Athena

and Daphne, too implicitly, when he supposes this idea to be retained in central Greek theology. 'Athena' originally meant only the dawn, among nations who knew nothing of a Sacred Spirit. But the Athena who catches Achilles by the hair, and urges the spear of Diomed, has not, in the mind of Homer, the slightest remaining connection with the mere beauty of daybreak. Daphne chased by Apollo, may perhaps—though I doubt even this much of consistence in the earlier myth—have meant the Dawn pursued by the Sun. But there is no trace whatever of this first idea left in the fable of Arcadia and Thessaly.

27. The central Greek Daphne is the daughter of one of the great river gods of Arcadia; her mother is the Earth. Now Arcadia is the Oberland of Greece; and the crests of Cyllene, Erymanthus, and Mænalus[[21]] surround it, like the Swiss forest cantons, with walls of rock, and shadows of pine. And it divides itself, like the Oberland, into three regions: first, the region of rock and snow, sacred to Mercury and Apollo, in which Mercury's birth on Cyllene, his construction of the lyre, and his stealing the oxen of Apollo, are all expressions of the enchantments of cloud and sound, mingling with the sunshine, on the cliffs of Cyllene.

"While the mists

Flying, and rainy vapours, call out shapes

And phantoms from the crags and solid earth

As fast as a musician scatters sounds