Proserpina, Volume 1

CHAPTER XI.

GENEALOGY

1. Returning, after more than a year's sorrowful interval, to my Sicilian fields,—not incognisant, now, of some of the darker realms of Proserpina; and with feebler heart, and, it may be, feebler wits, for wandering in her brighter ones,—I find what I had written by way of sequel to the last chapter, somewhat difficult, and extremely tiresome. Not the less, after giving fair notice of the difficulty, and asking due pardon for the tiresomeness, I am minded to let it stand; trusting to end, with it, once for all, investigations of the kind. But in finishing this first volume of my School Botany, I must try to give the reader some notion of the plan of the book, as it now, during the time for thinking over it which illness left me, has got itself arranged in my mind, within limits of possible execution. And this the rather, because I wish also to state, somewhat more gravely than I have yet done, the grounds on which I venture here to reject many of the received names of plants; and to substitute others for them, relating to entirely different attributes from those on which their present nomenclature is confusedly edified.

I have already in some measure given the reasons for this change;45 but I feel that, for the sake of those among my scholars who have laboriously learned the accepted names, I ought now also to explain its method more completely.

2. I call the present system of nomenclature confusedly edified, because it introduces,—without, apparently, any consciousness of the inconsistency, and certainly with no apology for it,—names founded sometimes on the history of plants, sometimes on their qualities, sometimes on their forms, sometimes on their products, and sometimes on their poetical associations.

On their history—as 'Gentian' from King Gentius, and Funkia from Dr. Funk.

On their qualities—as 'Scrophularia' from its (quite uncertified) use in scrofula.

On their forms—as the 'Caryophylls' from having petals like husks of nuts.

On their products—as 'Cocos nucifera' from its nuts.

And on their poetical associations,—as the Star of Bethlehem from its imagined resemblance to the light of that seen by the Magi.

3. Now, this variety of grounds for nomenclature might patiently, and even with advantage, be permitted, provided the grounds themselves were separately firm, and the inconsistency of method advisedly allowed, and, in each case, justified. If the histories of King Gentius and Dr. Funk are indeed important branches of human knowledge;—if the Scrophulariaceæ do indeed cure King's Evil;—if pinks be best described in their likeness to nuts;—and the Star of Bethlehem verily remind us of Christ's Nativity,—by all means let these and other such names be evermore retained. But if Dr. Funk be not a person in any special manner needing either stellification or florification; if neither herb nor flower can avail, more than the touch of monarchs, against hereditary pain; if it be no better account of a pink to say it is nut-leaved, than of a nut to say it is pink-leaved; and if the modern mind, incurious respecting the journeys of wise men, has already confused, in its Bradshaw's Bible, the station of Bethlehem with that of Bethel,46 it is certainly time to take some order with the partly false, partly useless, and partly forgotten literature of the Fields; and, before we bow our children's memories to the burden of it, ensure that there shall be matter worth carriage in the load.

4. And farther, in attempting such a change, we must be clear in our own minds whether we wish our nomenclature to tell us something about the plant itself, or only to tell us the place it holds in relation to other plants: as, for instance, in the Herb-Robert, would it be well to christen it, shortly, 'Rob Roy,' because it is pre-eminently red, and so have done with it;—or rather to dwell on its family connections, and call it 'Macgregoraceous'?

5. Before we can wisely decide this point, we must resolve whether our botany is intended mainly to be useful to the vulgar, or satisfactory to the scientific élite. For if we give names characterizing individuals, the circle of plants which any country possesses may be easily made known to the children who live in it: but if we give names founded on the connexion between these and others at the Antipodes, the parish school-master will certainly have double work; and it may be doubted greatly whether the parish school-boy, at the end of the lecture, will have half as many ideas.

6. Nevertheless, when the features of any great order of plants are constant, and, on the whole, represented with great clearness both in cold and warm climates, it may be desirable to express this their citizenship of the world in definite nomenclature. But my own method, so far as hitherto developed, consists essentially in fastening the thoughts of the pupil on the special character of the plant, in the place where he is likely to see it; and therefore, in expressing the power of its race and order in the wider world, rather by reference to mythological associations than to botanical structure.

7. For instance, Plate VII. represents, of its real size, an ordinary spring flower in our English mountain fields. It is an average example,—not one of rare size under rare conditions,—rather smaller than the average, indeed, that I might get it well into my plate. It is one of the flowers whose names I think good to change; but I look carefully through the existing titles belonging to it and its fellows, that I may keep all I expediently can. I find, in the first place, that Linnæus called one group of its relations, Ophryds, from Ophrys,—Greek for the eyebrow,—on account of their resemblance to the brow of an animal frowning, or to the overshadowing casque of a helmet. I perceive this to be really a very general aspect of the flower; and therefore, no less than in respect to Linnæus, I adopt this for the total name of the order, and call them 'Ophrydæ,' or, shortly, 'Ophryds.'

8. Secondly: so far as I know these flowers myself, I perceive them to fall practically into three divisions,—one, growing in English meadows and Alpine pastures, and always adding to their beauty; another, growing in all sorts of places, very ugly itself, and adding to the ugliness of its indiscriminated haunts; and a third, growing mostly up in the air, with as little root as possible, and of gracefully fantastic forms, such as this kind of nativity and habitation might presuppose. For the present, I am satisfied to give names to these three groups only. There may be plenty of others which I do not know, and which other people may name, according to their knowledge. But in all these three kinds known to me, I perceive one constant characteristic to be some manner of distortion and I desire that fact,—marking a spiritual (in my sense of the word) character of extreme mystery,—to be the first enforced on the mind of the young learner. It is exhibited to the English child, primarily, in the form of the stalk of each flower, attaching it to the central virga. This stalk is always twisted once and a half round, as if somebody had been trying to wring the blossom off; and the name of the family, in Proserpina, will therefore be 'Contorta'47 in Latin, and 'Wreathe-wort' in English.

Farther: the beautiful power of the one I have drawn in its spring life, is in the opposition of its dark purple to the primrose in England, and the pale yellow anemone in the Alps. And its individual name will be, therefore, 'Contorta purpurea'—Purple Wreathe-wort.

And in drawing it, I take care to dwell on this strength of its color, and to show thoroughly that it is a dark blossom,48 before I trouble myself about its minor characters.

9. The second group of this kind of flowers live, as I said, in all sorts of places; but mostly, I think, in disagreeable ones,—torn and irregular ground, under alternations of unwholesome heat and shade, and among swarms of nasty insects. I cannot yet venture on any bold general statement about them, but I think that is mostly their way; and at all events, they themselves are in the habit of dressing in livid and unpleasant colors; and are distinguished from all other flowers by twisting, not only their stalks, but one of their petals, not once and a half only, but two or three times round, and putting it far out at the same time, as a foul jester would put out his tongue: while also the singular power of grotesque mimicry, which, though strong also in the other groups of their race, seems in the others more or less playful, is, in these, definitely degraded, and, in aspect, malicious.

10. Now I find the Latin name 'Satyrium' attached already to one sort of these flowers; and we cannot possibly have a better one for all of them. It is true that, in its first Greek form, Dioscorides attaches it to a white, not a livid, flower; and I dare say there are some white ones of the breed: but, in its full sense, the term is exactly right for the entire group of ugly blossoms of which the characteristic is the spiral curve and protraction of their central petal: and every other form of Satyric ugliness which I find among the Ophryds, whatever its color, will be grouped with them. And I make them central, because this humour runs through the whole order, and is, indeed, their distinguishing sign.

11. Then the third group, living actually in the air, and only holding fast by, without nourishing itself from, the ground, rock, or tree-trunk on which it is rooted, may of course most naturally and accurately be called 'Aeria,' as it has long been popularly known in English by the name of Air-plant.

Thus we have one general name for all these creatures, 'Ophryd'; and three family or group names, Contorta, Satyrium, and Aeria,—every one of these titles containing as much accurate fact about the thing named as I can possibly get packed into their syllables: and I will trouble my young readers with no more divisions of the order. And if their parents, tutors, or governors, after this fair warning, choose to make them learn, instead, the seventy-seven different names with which botanist-heraldries have beautifully ennobled the family,—all I can say is, let them at least begin by learning them themselves. They will be found in due order in pages 1084, 1085 of Loudon's Cyclopædia.49

12. But now, farther: the student will observe that the name of the total order is Greek; while the three family ones are Latin, although the central one is originally Greek also.

I adopt this as far as possible for a law through my whole plant nomenclature.

13. Farther: the terminations of the Latin family names will be, for the most part, of the masculine, feminine, and neuter forms, us, a, um, with these following attached conditions.

(I.) Those terminating in 'us,' though often of feminine words, as the central Arbor, will indicate either real masculine strength (quereus, laurus), or conditions of dominant majesty (cedrus), of stubbornness and enduring force (crataegus), or of peasant-like commonalty and hardship (juncus); softened, as it may sometimes happen, into gentleness and beneficence (thymus). The occasional forms in 'er' and 'il' will have similar power (acer, basil).

(II.) Names with the feminine termination 'a,' if they are real names of girls, will always mean flowers that are perfectly pretty and perfectly good (Lucia, Viola, Margarita, Clarissa). Names terminating in 'a' which are not also accepted names of girls, may sometimes be none the less honourable, (Primula, Campanula,) but for the most part will signify either plants that are only good and worthy in a nursy sort of way, (Salvia,) or that are good without being pretty, (Lavandula,) or pretty without being good, (Kalmia). But no name terminating in 'a' will be attached to a plant that is neither good nor pretty.

(III.) The neuter names terminating in 'um' will always indicate some power either of active or suggestive evil, (Conîum, Solanum, Satyrium,) or a relation, more or less definite, to death; but this relation to death may sometimes be noble, or pathetic,—"which to-day is, and to-morrow is cast into the oven,"—Lilium.

But the leading position of these neuters in the plant's double name must be noticed by students unacquainted with Latin, in order to distinguish them from plural genitives, which will always, of course, be the second word, (Francesca Fontium, Francesca of the Springs.)

14. Names terminating in 'is' and 'e,' if definitely names of women, (Iris, Amaryllis, Alcestis, Daphne,) will always signify flowers of great beauty, and noble historic association. If not definitely names of women, they will yet indicate some specialty of sensitiveness, or association with legend (Berberis, Clematis). No neuters in 'e' will be admitted.

15. Participial terminations (Impatiens), with neuters in 'en' (Cyclamen), will always be descriptive of some special quality or form,—leaving it indeterminate if good or bad, until explained. It will be manifestly impossible to limit either these neuters, or the feminines in 'is' to Latin forms; but we shall always know by their termination that they cannot be generic names, if we are strict in forming these last on a given method.

16. How little method there is in our present formation of them, I am myself more and more surprised as I consider. A child is shown a rose, and told that he is to call every flower like that, 'Rosaceous';50 he is next shown a lily, and told that he is to call every flower like that, 'Liliaceous';—so far well; but he is next shown a daisy, and is not at all allowed to call every flower like that, 'Daisaceous,' but he must call it, like the fifth order of architecture, 'Composite'; and being next shown a pink, he is not allowed to call other pinks 'Pinkaceous,' but 'Nut-leafed'; and being next shown a pease-blossom, he is not allowed to call other pease-blossoms 'Peasaceous,' but, in a brilliant burst of botanical imagination, he is incited to call it by two names instead of one, 'Butterfly-aceous' from its flower, and 'Pod-aceous' from its seed;—the inconsistency of the terms thus enforced upon him being perfected in their inaccuracy, for a daisy is not one whit more composite than Queen of the meadow, or Jura Jacinth;51 and 'legumen' is not Latin for a pod, but 'siliqua,'—so that no good scholar could remember Virgil's 'siliqua quassante legumen,' without overthrowing all his Pisan nomenclature.

17. Farther. If we ground our names of the higher orders on the distinctive characters of form in plants, these are so many, and so subtle, that we are at once involved in more investigations than a young learner has ever time to follow successfully, and they must be at all times liable to dislocations and rearrangements on the discovery of any new link in the infinitely entangled chain. But if we found our higher nomenclature at once on historic fact, and relative conditions of climate and character, rather than of form, we may at once distribute our flora into unalterable groups, to which we may add at our pleasure, but which will never need disturbance; far less, reconstruction.

18. For instance,—and to begin,—it is an historical fact that for many centuries the English nation believed that the Founder of its religion, spiritually, by the mouth of the King who spake of all herbs, had likened himself to two flowers,—the Rose of Sharon, and Lily of the Valley. The fact of this belief is one of the most important in the history of England,—that is to say, of the mind or heart of England: and it is connected solemnly with the heart of Italy also, by the closing cantos of the Paradiso.

I think it well therefore that our two first generic, or at least commandant, names heading the out-laid and in-laid divisions of plants, should be of the rose and lily, with such meaning in them as may remind us of this fact in the history of human mind.

It is also historical that the personal appearing of this Master of our religion was spoken of by our chief religious teacher in these terms: "The Grace of God, that bringeth salvation, hath appeared unto all men." And it is a constant fact that this 'grace' or 'favor' of God is spoken of as "giving us to eat of the Tree of Life."

19. Now, comparing the botanical facts I have to express, with these historical ones, I find that the rose tribe has been formed among flowers, not in distant and monstrous geologic æras, but in the human epoch;—that its 'grace' or favor has been in all countries so felt as to cause its acceptance everywhere for the most perfect physical type of womanhood;—and that the characteristic fruit of the tribe is so sweet, that it has become symbolic at once of the subtlest temptation, and the kindest ministry to the earthly passion of the human race. "Comfort me with apples, for I am sick of love."

20. Therefore I shall call the entire order of these flowers 'Charites,' (Graces,) and they will be divided into these five genera, Rosa, Persica, Pomum, Rubra, and Fragaria. Which sequence of names I do not think the young learner will have difficulty in remembering; nor in understanding why I distinguish the central group by the fruit instead of the flower. And if he once clearly master the structure and relations of these five genera, he will have no difficulty in attaching to them, in a satellitic or subordinate manner, such inferior groups as that of the Silver-weed, or the Tormentilla; but all he will have to learn by heart and rote, will be these six names; the Greek Master-name, Charites, and the five generic names, in each case belonging to plants, as he will soon find, of extreme personal interest to him.

21. I have used the word 'Order' as the name of our widest groups, in preference to 'Class,' because these widest groups will not always include flowers like each other in form, or equal to each other in vegetative rank; but they will be 'Orders,' literally like those of any religious or chivalric association, having some common link rather intellectual than national,—the Charites, for instance, linked by their kindness,—the Oreiades, by their mountain seclusion, as Sisters of Charity or Monks of the Chartreuse, irrespective of ties of relationship. Then beneath these orders will come, what may be rightly called, either as above in Greek derivation, 'Genera,' or in Latin, 'Gentes,' for which, however, I choose the Latin word, because Genus is disagreeably liable to be confused on the ear with 'genius'; but Gens, never; and also 'nomen gentile' is a clearer and better expression than 'nomen generosum,' and I will not coin the barbarous one, 'genericum.' The name of the Gens, (as 'Lucia,') with an attached epithet, as 'Verna,' will, in most cases, be enough to characterize the individual flower; but if farther subdivision be necessary, the third order will be that of Families, indicated by a 'nomen familiare' added in the third place of nomenclature, as Lucia Verna,—Borealis; and no farther subdivision will ever be admitted. I avoid the word 'species'—originally a bad one, and lately vulgarized beyond endurance—altogether. And varieties belonging to narrow localities, or induced by horticulture, may be named as they please by the people living near the spot, or by the gardener who grows them; but will not be acknowledged by Proserpina. Nevertheless, the arbitrary reduction under Ordines, Gentes, and Familiæ, is always to be remembered as one of massive practical convenience only; and the more subtle arborescence of the infinitely varying structures may be followed, like a human genealogy, as far as we please, afterwards; when once we have got our common plants clearly arranged and intelligibly named.

22. But now we find ourselves in the presence of a new difficulty, the greatest we have to deal with in the whole matter.

One new nomenclature, to be thoroughly good, must be acceptable to scholars in the five great languages, Greek, Latin, French, Italian, and English; and it must be acceptable by them in teaching the native children of each country. I shall not be satisfied, unless I can feel that the little maids who gather their first violets under the Acropolis rock, may receive for them Æschylean words again with joy. I shall not be content, unless the mothers watching their children at play in the Ceramicus of Paris, under the scarred ruins of her Kings' palace, may yet teach them there to know the flowers which the Maid of Orleans gathered at Domremy. I shall not be satisfied unless every word I ask from the lips of the children of Florence and Rome, may enable them better to praise the flowers that are chosen by the hand of Matilda,52 and bloom around the tomb of Virgil.

23. Now in this first example of nomenclature, the Master-name, being pure Greek, may easily be accepted by Greek children, remembering that certain also of their own poets, if they did not call the flower a Grace itself, at least thought of it as giving gladness to the Three in their dances.53 But for French children the word 'Grâce' has been doubly and trebly corrupted; first, by entirely false theological scholarship, mistaking the 'Favor' or Grace done by God to good men, for the 'Misericordia,' or mercy, shown by Him to bad ones; and so, in practical life, finally substituting 'Grâce' as a word of extreme and mortal prayer, for 'Merci,' and of late using 'Merci' in a totally ridiculous and perverted power, for the giving of thanks (or refusal of offered good): while the literally derived word 'Charite' has become, in the modern mind, a gift, whether from God or man, only to the wretched, never to the happy: and lastly, 'Grâce' in its physical sense has been perverted, by their social vulgarity, into an idea, whether with respect to form or motion, commending itself rather to the ballet-master than either to the painter or the priest.