Nor merely in its oblique setting on the stalk, but in the reversion of its
two upper petals, the flower shows this purpose of being fully seen. (For a
flower that _does_ hide itself, take a lily of the valley, or the bell of a
grape hyacinth, or a cyclamen.) But respecting this matter of
petal-reversion, we must now farther state two or three general principles.

6. A perfect or pure flower, as a rose, oxalis, or campanula, is always
composed of an unbroken whorl, or corolla, in the form of a disk, cup,
bell, or, if it draw together again at the lips, a narrow-necked vase. This
cup, bell, or vase, is divided into similar petals, (or segments, which are
petals carefully joined,) varying in number from three to eight, and
enclosed by a calyx whose sepals are symmetrical also.

An imperfect, or, as I am inclined rather to call it, an 'injured' flower,
is one in which some of the petals have inferior office and position, and
are either degraded, for the benefit of others, or expanded and honoured at
the cost of others.

Of this process, the first and simplest condition is the reversal of the
upper petals and elongation of the lower ones, in blossoms set on the side
of a clustered stalk. When the change is simply and directly dependent on
their position in the cluster, as in Aurora Regina,[1] modifying every bell
just in proportion as it declines from the perfected central one, some of
the loveliest groups of form are produced which can be seen in any inferior
organism: but when the irregularity becomes fixed, and the flower is always
to the same extent distorted, whatever its position in the cluster, the
plant is to be rightly thought of as reduced to a lower rank in creation.

7. It is to be observed, also, that these inferior forms of flower have
always the appearance of being produced by some kind of mischief--blight,