ert, and their necessity, therein, to life of man and beast. {55}

24. And thus, associating these grass and lily leaves always with
fountains, or with dew, I think we may get a pretty general name for them
also. You know that Cora, our Madonna of the flowers, was lost in Sicilian
Fields: you know, also, that the fairest of Greek fountains, lost in
Greece, was thought to rise in a Sicilian islet; and that the real
springing of the noble fountain in that rock was one of the causes which
determined the position of the greatest Greek city of Sicily. So I think,
as we call the fairest branched leaves 'Apolline,' we will call the fairest
flowing ones 'Arethusan.' But remember that the Apolline leaf represents
only the central type of land leaves, and is, within certain limits, of a
fixed form; while the beautiful Arethusan leaves, alike in flowing of their
lines, change their forms indefinitely,--some shaped like round pools, and
some like winding currents, and many like arrows, and many like hearts, and
otherwise varied and variable, as leaves ought to be,--that rise out of the
waters, and float amidst the pausing of their foam.

25. Brantwood, _Easter Day_, 1875.--I don't like to spoil my pretty
sentence, above; but on reading it over, I suspect I wrote it confusing the
water-lily leaf, and other floating ones of the same kind, with the
Arethusan forms. But the water-lily and water-ranunculus leaves, and such
others, are to the orders of earth-loving leaves what ducks and swans are
to birds; (the swan is the water-lily of birds;) they are _swimming_
leaves; not properly watery creatures, or able to live under water like
fish, (unless {56} when dormant), but just like birds that pass their lives
on the surface of the waves--though they must breathe in the air.

And these natant leaves, as they lie on the water surface, do not want
strong ribs to carry them,[20] but have very delicate ones beautifully
branching into the orbed space, to keep the tissue nice and flat; while, on
the other hand, leaves that really have to grow under water, sacrifice
their tissue, and keep only their ribs, like coral animals; ('Ranunculus
heterophyllus,' 'other-leaved Frog-flower,' and its like,) just as, if you
keep your own hands too long in water, they shrivel at the finger-ends.

26. So that you must not attach any great botanical importance to the
characters of contrasted aspects in leaves, which I wish you to express by
the words 'Apolline