l mentally connect the whole useful group
with the three great AEsculapiadae, Cinchona, Coffea, and Camellia.

30. Taking next the water-plants, crowned in the DROSIDAE, which include the
five great families, Juncus, Jacinthus, Amaryllis, Iris, and Lilium, and
are masculine in their Greek name because their two first groups, Juncus
and Jacinthus, are masculine, I gather together the three orders of
TRITONIDES, which are notably trefoil; the NAIADES, notably quatrefoil, but
for which I keep their present pretty name; and the BATRACHIDES,[59]
notably cinqfoil, for which I keep their present ugly one, only changing it
from Latin into Greek.

31. I am not sure of being forgiven so readily for putting the Grasses,
Sedges, Mosses, and Lichens together, under the great general head of
Demetridae. But it seems to me the mosses and lichens belong no less
definitely to Demeter, in being the first gatherers of earth on rock, and
the first coverers of its sterile surface, than the grass which at last
prepares it to the foot and to the food of man. And with the mosses I shall
take all the especially moss-plants which otherwise are homeless or
companionless, Drosera, and the like, and as a connecting link with the
flowers belonging to the Dark {200} Kora, the two strange orders of the
Ophryds and Agarics.

32. Lastly will come the orders of flowers which may be thought of as
belonging for the most part to the Dark Kora of the lower world,--having at
least the power of death, if not its terror, given them, together with
offices of comfort and healing in sleep, or of strengthening, if not too
prolonged, action on the nervous power of life. Of these, the first will be
the DIONYSIDAE,--Hedera, Vitis, Liana; then the DRACONIDAE,--Atropa,
Digitalis, Linaria; and, lastly, the MOIRIDAE,--Conium, Papaver, Solanum,
Arum, and Nerium.

33. As I see this scheme now drawn out, simple as it is, the scope of it
seems not only far too great for adequate completion by my own labour, but
larger than the time likely to be given to botany by average scholars would
enable them intelligently to grasp: and yet it includes, I suppose, not the
tenth part of the varieties of plants respecting which, in competitive
examination, a student of physical science is now expected to know, or at
least assert on hearsay, _something_.

So far as I have influence with the young, myself, I would pray them to be
assured that it is better to know the habits of one plant