4. (D) The form of its fruit,
5. (C) The consistence of its shell,—and
6. (E) The number of seeds in it.
Abstracting, then, from the primary description, all the six inessential points, I find the three essential ones left are, that the style is divided into two lobes at the upper end, that a number of glandular hairs cover the ovary, and that this latter contains two cells.
3. None of which particulars concern any reasonable mortal, looking at a Foxglove, in the smallest degree. Whether hairs which he can't see are glandular or bristly,—whether the green knobs, which are left when the purple bells are gone, are divided into two lobes or two hundred,—and whether the style is split, like a snake's tongue, into two lobes, or like a rogue's, into any number—are merely matters of vulgar curiosity, which he needs a microscope to discover, and will lose a day of his life in discovering. But if any pretty young Proserpina, escaped from the Plutonic durance of London, and carried by the tubular process, which replaces Charon's boat, over
the Lune at Lancaster, cares to come and walk on the Coniston hills in a summer morning, when the eyebright is out on the high fields, she may gather, with a little help from Brantwood garden, a bouquet of the entire Foxglove tribe in flower, as it is at present defined, and may see what they are like, altogether.
4. She shall gather: first, the Euphrasy, which makes the turf on the brow of the hill glitter as if with new-fallen manna; then, from one of the blue clusters on the top of the garden wall, the common bright blue Speedwell; and, from the garden bed beneath, a dark blue spire of Veronica spicata; then, at the nearest opening into the wood, a little foxglove in its first delight of shaking out its bells; then—what next does the Doctor say?—a snapdragon? we must go back into the garden for that—here is a goodly crimson one, but what the little speedwell will think of him for a relative I can't think!—a mullein?—that we must do without for the moment; a monkey flower?—that we will do without, altogether; a lady's slipper?—say rather a goblin's with the gout! but, such as the flower-cobbler has made it, here is one of the kind that people praise, out of the greenhouse,—and yet a figwort we must have, too; which I see on referring to Loudon, may be balm-leaved, hemp-leaved, tansy-leaved, nettle-leaved, wing-leaved, heart-leaved, ear-leaved, spear-leaved, or lyre-leaved. I think I can find a balm-leaved one, though I don't know what to make of it when I've got it, but it's called a
'Scorodonia' in Sowerby, and something very ugly besides;—I'll put a bit of Teucrium Scorodonia in, to finish: and now—how will my young Proserpina arrange her bouquet, and rank the family relations to their contentment?
5. She has only one kind of flowers—in her hand, as botanical classification stands at present; and whether the system be more rational, or in any human sense more scientific, which puts calceolaria and speedwell together,—and foxglove and euphrasy; and runs them on one side into the mints, and on the other into the nightshades;—naming them, meanwhile, some from diseases, some from vermin, some from blockheads, and the rest anyhow:—or the method I am pleading for, which teaches us, watchful of their seasonable return and chosen abiding places, to associate in our memory the flowers which truly resemble, or fondly companion, or, in time kept by the signs of Heaven, succeed, each other; and to name them in some historical connection with the loveliest fancies and most helpful faiths of the ancestral world—Proserpina be judge; with every maid that sets flowers on brow or breast—from Thule to Sicily.
6. We will unbind our bouquet, then, and putting all the rest of its flowers aside, examine the range and nature of the little blue cluster only.