close clusters, may, in process of time, have extended their outside
petals rather than the interior ones (as the outer flowers of the
clusters of many umbellifers actually do), and thus elongated and
variously distorted forms have established themselves; then if the stalk
is attached to the side instead of the base of the tube, its base becomes
a spur, and thus all the grotesque forms of the mints, violets, and
larkspurs, gradually might be composed. But, however this may be, there
is one great tribe of plants separate from the rest, and of which the
influence seems shed upon the rest, in different degrees; and these would
give the impression, not so much of having been developed by change, as
of being stamped with a character of their own, more or less serpentine
or dragon-like. And I think you will find it convenient to call these
generally Draconidæ; disregarding their present ugly botanical name which
I do not care even to write once--you may take for their principal types
the foxglove, snapdragon, and calceolaria; and you will find they all
agree in a tendency to decorate themselves by spots, and with bosses or
swollen places in their leaves, as if they had been touched by poison.
The spot of the foxglove is especially strange, because it draws the
color out of the tissue all around it, as if it had been stung, and as if
the central color was really an inflamed spot, with paleness round. Then
also they carry to its extreme the decoration by bulging or pouting out
the petal,--often beautifully used by other flowers in a minor degree,
like the beating out of bosses in hollow silver, as in the kalmia, beaten
out apparently in each petal by the stamens instead of a hammer; or the
borage, pouting towards; but the snapdragons and calceolarias carry it to
its extreme.

87. Then the spirit of these Draconidæ seems to pass more or less into
other flowers, whose forms are properly pure vases; but it affects some
of them slightly, others not at all. It never strongly affects the