[16] The bitter sorrow with which I first recognized the extreme rarity of finely-developed organic sight is expressed enough in the lecture on the Mystery of Life, added in the large edition of 'Sesame and Lilies.'
[17] Lat. acesco, to turn sour.
[18] Withering quotes this as from Linnæus, and adds on authority of a Mr. Hawkes, "This did not succeed when tried with cows' milk." He also gives as another name, Yorkshire Sanicle; and says it is called earning grass in Scotland. Linnæus says the juice will curdle reindeer's milk. The name for rennet is earning, in Lincolnshire. Withering also gives this note: "Pinguis, fat, from its effect in CONGEALING milk."—(A.) Withering of course wrong: the name comes, be the reader finally assured, from the fatness of the green leaf, quite peculiar among wild plants, and fastened down for us in the French word 'Grassette.' I have found the flowers also difficult to dry, in the benighted early times when I used to think a dried plant useful! See closing paragraphs of the *4th chapter.—R.
[19] I find much more difficulty, myself, being old, in using my altered names for species than my young scholars will. In watching the bells of the purple bindweed fade at evening, let them learn the fourth verse of the prayer of Hezekiah, as it is in the Vulgate—"Generatio mea ablata est, et convoluta est a me, sicut tabernaculum pastoris,"—and they will not forget the name of the fast-fading—ever renewed—"belle d'un jour."
[20] "It is Miss Cobbe, I think, who says 'all wild flowers know how to die gracefully.'"—A.
[21] See distinction between recumbent and rampant herbs, below, under 'Veronica Agrestis,' p. [72].
[22] 'Abstracted' rather, I should have said, and with perfect skill, by Mr. Collingwood (the joint translator of Xenophon's Economics for the 'Bibliotheca Pastorum'). So also the next following cut, Fig. 5.
[23] Of the references, henceforward necessary to the books I have used as authorities, the reader will please note the following abbreviations:—
C. Curtis's Magazine of Botany.
D. Flora Danica.
F. Figuier.
G. Sibthorpe's Flora Græca.
L. Linnæus. Systema Naturæ.
L.S. Linnæus's Flora Suecica. But till we are quite used to the other letters, I print this reference in words.
L.N. William Curtis's Flora Londinensis. Of the exquisite plates engraved for this book by James Sowerby, note is taken in the close of next chapter.
O. Sowerby's English Wild Flowers; the old edition in thirty-two thin volumes—far the best.
S. Sowerby's English Wild Flowers; the modern edition in ten volumes.
[24] See letter on the last results of our African campaigns, in the Morning Post of April 14th, of this year.