10. The truth of all popular traditions as to the healing power of herbs
will be tried impartially as soon as men again desire to lead healthy
lives; but I shall not in 'Proserpina' retain any of the names of their
gathered and dead or distilled substance, but name them always from the
characters of their life. I retain, however, for this plant its name
Brunella, Fr. Brunelle, because we may ourselves understand it as a
derivation from Brune; and I bring it here before the reader's attention as
giving him a perfectly instructive general type of the kind of degradation
which takes place in the forms of flowers under more or less malefic
influence, causing distortion and disguise of their floral structure. Thus
it is not the normal character of a flower petal to have a cluster of
bristles growing out of the middle of it, nor to be jagged at the edge into
the likeness of a fanged fish's jaw, nor to be swollen or pouted into the
likeness of a diseased gland in an animal's throat. A really uncorrupted
flower suggests none but delightful images, and is like nothing but itself.

11. I find that in the year 1719, Tournefort defined, with exactitude which
has rendered the definition authoritative for all time, the tribe to which
this Brownie flower belongs, constituting them his fourth class, and
describing them in terms even more depreciatingly imaginative than any I
have ventured to use myself. I translate the passage (vol. i., p. 177):--

12. "The name of Labiate flower is given to a single-petaled flower which,
beneath, is attenuated into a tube, and above is expanded into a lip, which
is either single or double. It is proper to a labiate flower,--first, that
it has a one-leaved calyx (ut calycem habeat _unifolium_), for the most
part tubulated, or reminding one of a paper hood (cucullum papyraceum);
and, secondly, that its pistil ripens into a fruit consisting of four
seeds, which ripen in the calyx itself, as if in their own seed-vessel, by
which a labiate flower is distinguished from a personate one, whose pistil