19. I perceive, farther, that this disorderly flower is lifted on a lanky,
awkward, springless, and yet stiff flower-stalk; which is not round, as a
flower-stalk ought to be, (vol. i., p. 155,) but obstinately square, and
fluted, with projecting edges, like a pillar run thin out of an
iron-foundry for a cheap railway station. I perceive also that it has set
on it, just before turning down to carry the flower, two little jaggy and
indefinable leaves,--their colour a little more violet than the blossom.

These, and such undeveloping leaves, wherever they occur, are called
'bracts' by botanists, a good word, from the Latin 'bractea,' meaning a
piece of metal plate, so thin as to crackle. They seem always a little
stiff, like bad parchment,--born to come to nothing--a sort of
infinitesimal fairy-lawyer's deed. They ought to have been in my index at
p. 255, under the head of leaves, and are frequent in flower
structure,--never, as far as one can see, of the smallest use. They are
constant, however, in the flower-stalk of the whole violet tribe.

20. I perceive, farther, that this lanky flower-stalk, bending a little in
a crabbed, broken way, like an obstinate person tired, pushes itself up out
of a still more stubborn, nondescript, hollow angular, dogseared gas-pipe
of a stalk, with a section something like this,

[Illustration]

but no bigger than

[Illustration]

with a quantity of ill-made and ill-hemmed leaves on it, of no describable
leaf-cloth or texture,--not cressic, (though the thing does altogether look