that it grows in a spire, without any danger of finding, farther on, a carpet of prostrate and entangling digitalis; and we may pronounce of a buttercup that it grows mostly in meadows, without fear of finding ourselves, at the edge of the next thicket, under the shadow of a buttercup-bush growing into valuable timber.  But the Veronica reclines with the lowly,[21] upon occasion, and aspires, with the proud; is here the pleased companion of the ground-ivies, and there the unrebuked rival of the larkspurs:  on the rocks of Coniston it effaces itself almost into the film of a lichen; it pierces the snows of Iceland with the gentian:  and in the Falkland Islands is a white-blossomed evergreen, of which botanists are in dispute whether it be Veronica or Olive.

12.  Of these many and various forms, I find the manners and customs alike inconstant; and this of especially singular in them—­that the Alpine and northern species bloom hardily in contest with the retiring snows, while with us they wait till the spring is past, and offer themselves to us only in consolation for the vanished violet and primrose.  As we farther examine the ways of plants, I suppose we shall find some that determine upon a fixed season, and will bloom methodically in June or July, whether in Abyssinia or Greenland; and others, like the violet and crocus, which are flowers of the spring, at whatever time of the favouring or frowning year the spring returns to their country.  I suppose also that botanists and gardeners know all these matters thoroughly:  but they don’t put them into their books, and the clear notions of them only come to me now, as I think and watch.

13.  Broadly, however, the families of the Veronica fall into three main divisions,—­those which have round leaves lobed at the edge, like ground ivy; those which have small thyme-like leaves; and those which have long leaves like a foxglove’s, only smaller—­never more than two or two and a half inches long.  I therefore take them in these connections, though without any bar between the groups; only separating the Regina from the other thyme-leaved ones, to give her due precedence; and the rest will then arrange themselves into twenty families, easily distinguishable and memorable.

[Illustration:  FIG.  IV.]

I have chosen for Veronica Regina, the brave Icelandic one, which pierces the snow in first spring, with lovely small shoots of perfectly set leaves, no larger than a grain of wheat; the flowers in a lifted cluster of five or six together, not crowded, yet not loose; large, for veronica—­about the size of a silver penny, or say half an inch across—­deep blue, with ruby centre.

My woodcut, Fig. 4, is outlined[22] from the beautiful engraving D. 342,[23]—­there called ‘fruticulosa,’ from the number of the young shoots.

14.  Beneath the Regina, come the twenty easily distinguished families, namely:—­

1.  Chamaedrys.  ‘Ground-oak.’  I cannot tell why so called—­its small and rounded leaves having nothing like oak leaves about them, except the serration, which is common to half, at least, of all leaves that grow.  But the idea is all over Europe, apparently.  Fr. ‘petit chene:’  German and English ‘Germander,’ a merely corrupt form of Chamaedrys.