Several of the Draconidae are parasites, and suck the roots of other plants, and have only just enough of their own to catch with.  The Yellow Rattle is one; it clings to the roots of the grasses and clovers, and no cultivation will make it thrive without them.  My authority for this last fact is Grant Allen; but I have observed for myself that the Yellow Rattle has very small white sucking roots, and no earth sticking to them.  The toothworts and broom rapes are Draconidae, I think, and wholly parasites.  Can it be that the Red Rattle is the one member of the family that has ’proper pride, and is self supporting’? the others are mendicant orders.  We had what we choose to call the Dorcas flower show yesterday, and we gave, as usual, prizes for wild flower bouquets.  I tried to find out the local names of several flowers, but they all seemed to be called ’I don’t know, ma’am.’  I would not allow this name to suffice for the red poppy, and I said ’This red flower must be called something—­tell me what you call it?’ A few of the audience answered ‘Blind Eyes.’  Is it because they have to do with sleep that they are called Blind Eyes—­or because they are dazzling?”

20.  I think, certainly, from the dazzling, which sometimes with the poppy, scarlet geranium, and nasturtium, is more distinctly oppressive to the eye than a real excess of light.

I will certainly not include among my rescued Draconidae, the parasitic Lathraea and Orobanche; and cannot yet make certain of any minor classification among those which I retain,—­but, uniting Bartsia with Euphrasia, I shall have, in the main, the three divisions Digitalis, Linaria, Euphrasia, and probably separate the moneyworts as links with Veronica, and Rhinanthus as links with Lathraea.

And as I shall certainly be unable this summer, under the pressure of resumed work at Oxford, to spend time in any new botanical investigations, I will rather try to fulfil the promise given in the last number, to collect what little I have been able hitherto to describe or ascertain, respecting the higher modes of tree structure.

* * * * *

CHAPTER VII.

SCIENCE IN HER CELLS.

[The following chapter has been written six years.  It was delayed in order to complete the promised clearer analysis of stem-structure; which, after a great deal of chopping, chipping, and peeling of my oaks and birches, came to reverently hopeless pause.  What is here done may yet have some use in pointing out to younger students how they may simplify their language, and direct their thoughts, so as to attain, in due time, to reverent hope.]

1.  The most generally useful book, to myself, hitherto, in such little time as I have for reading about plants, has been Lindley’s ‘Ladies’ Botany’; but the most rich and true I have yet found in illustration, the ’Histoire des Plantes,’[35]