imit is marked by the strawberry, and the equatorial by the
orange. The more arctic regions produce even the smallest kinds of fruit
with difficulty; and the more equatorial, in coarse, oleaginous, or
over-luscious masses.

15. All the most perfect fruits are developed _from exquisite forms either
of foliage or flower_. The vine leaf, in its generally decorative power, is
the most important, both in life and in art, of all that shade the
habitations of men. The olive leaf is, without any rival, the most
beautiful of the leaves of timber trees; and its blossom, though minute, of
extreme beauty. The apple is essentially the fruit of the rose, and the
peach of her only rival in her own colour. The cherry and orange blossom
are the two types of floral snow.

16. And, lastly, let my readers be assured, the economy of blossom and
fruit, with the distribution of water, {237} will be found hereafter the
most accurate test of wise national government.

For example of the action of a national government, rightly so called, in
these matters, I refer the student to the Mariegolas of Venice, translated
in Fors Clavigera; and I close this chapter, and this first volume of
Proserpina, not without pride, in the words I wrote on this same matter
eighteen years ago. "So far as the labourer's immediate profit is
concerned, it matters not an iron filing whether I employ him in growing a
peach, or in forging a bombshell. But the difference to him is final,
whether, when his child is ill, I walk into his cottage, and give it the
peach,--or drop the shell down his chimney, and blow his roof off."

* * * * *

{238}

INDEX I.

DESCRIPTIVE NOMENCLATURE.

Plants in perfect form are said, at page 26, to consist of four principal
parts: root, stem, leaf, and flower. (Compare Chapter V., Sec. 2.) The reader
may have been surprised at the omission of the fruit from this list. But a
plant which has borne fruit is no longer of 'perfect' form. Its flower is
dead. And, observe, it is further said, at page 65, (and compare Chapter
III., Sec. 2,) that the use of the fruit is to produce the flower: not of the
flower to produce the fruit. Therefore, the plant in perfect blossom, is
itself perfect. Nevertheless, the formation of the fruit, practically, is
included in the flower, and so spoken of in the fifteenth line of the same
page.

Each of these four main parts of a plant consist normally of a certain
series of mi