[25] I deliberately, not garrulously, allow more autobiography in
'Proserpina' than is becoming, because I know not how far I may be
permitted to carry on that which was begun in 'Fors.'

[26] In present Botany, Polygala Chamæbuxus; C. 316: or, in English, Much
Milk Ground-box. It is not, as matters usually go, a name to be ill thought
of, as it really contains three ideas; and the plant does, without doubt,
somewhat resemble box, and grows on the ground;--far more fitly called
'ground-box' than the Veronica 'ground-oak.' I want to find a pretty name
for it in connection with Savoy or Dauphine, where it indicates, as above
stated, the _healthy_ districts of _hard_ limestone. I do not remember it
as ever occurring among the dark and moist shales of the inner mountain
ranges, which at once confine and pollute the air.

[27] Which, with the following page, is the summary of many chapters of
'Modern Painters:' and of the aims kept in view throughout 'Munera
Pulveris.' The three kinds of Desert specified--of Reed, Sand, and
Rock--should be kept in mind as exhaustively including the states of the
earth neglected by man. For instance of a Reed desert, produced _merely_ by
his neglect, see Sir Samuel Baker's account of the choking up of the bed of
the White Nile. Of the sand desert, Sir F. Palgrave's journey from the
Djowf to Hayel, vol. i., p. 92.

[28] This subject is first entered on in the 'Seven Lamps,' and carried
forward in the final chapters of 'Modern Painters,'to the point where I
hope to take it up for conclusion, in the sections of 'Our Fathers have
told us' devoted to the history of the fourteenth century.

[29] See in the first volume, the plates of Sonchus Arvensis and Tussilago
Petasites; in the second, Carduus tomentosus and Picris Echioides.