CHAPTER VI.

MONACHA.

1. It is not a little vexing to me, in looking over the very little I have got done of my planned Systema Proserpinæ, to discover a grave mistake in the specifications of Veronica. It is Veronica chamædrys, not officinalis, which is our proper English Speedwell, and Welsh Fluellen; and all the eighth paragraph, p. [74], properly applies to that. Veronica officinalis is an extremely small flower rising on vertical stems out of recumbent leaves; and the drawing of it in the Flora Danica, which I mistook for a stunted northern state, is quite true of the English species,[[32]] except that it does not express the recumbent action of the leaves. The proper representation of ground-leafage has never yet been attempted in any botanical work whatever, and as, in recumbent plants, their grouping and action can only be seen from above, the plates of them should always have a dark and rugged background, not only to indicate the position of the eye, but to relieve the forms of the

leaves as they were intended to be shown. I will try to give some examples in the course of this year.

2. I find also, sorrowfully, that the references are wrong in three, if not more, places in that chapter. S. 971 and 972 should be transposed in p. [72]. S. 294 in p. [74] should be 984. D. 407 should be inserted after Peregrina, in p. [76]; and 203, in fourth line from bottom of p. [78], should be 903. I wish it were likely that these errors had been corrected by my readers,—the rarity of the Flora Danica making at present my references virtually useless: but I hope in time that our public institutes will possess themselves of copies: still more do I hope that some book of the kind will be undertaken by English artists and engravers, which shall be worthy of our own country.

3. Farther, I get into confusion by not always remembering my own nomenclature, and have allowed 'Gentianoides' to remain, for No. 16, though I banish Gentian. It will be far better to call this eastern mountain species 'Olympica': according to Sibthorpe's localization, "in summâ parte, nive solutâ, montis Olympi Bithyni," and the rather that Curtis's plate above referred to shows it in luxuriance to be liker an asphodel than a gentian.

4. I have also perhaps done wrong in considering Veronica polita and agrestis as only varieties, in No. 3. No author tells me why the first is called polite, but its blue seems more intense than that of agrestis; and as it