But to do this rightly, I must review and amplify some of my former
classification, which it will be advisable to do in a separate chapter.
* * * * *
CHAPTER VI.
MONACHA.
1. It is not a little vexing to me, in looking over the very little I have
got done of my planned Systema Proserpinae, to discover a grave mistake in
the specifications of Veronica. It is Veronica chamaedrys, not officinalis,
which is our proper English Speedwell, and Welsh Fluellen; and all the
eighth paragraph, p. 74, properly applies to that. Veronica officinalis is
an extremely small flower rising on vertical stems out of recumbent leaves;
and the drawing of it in the Flora Danica, which I mistook for a stunted
northern state, is quite true of the English species,[32] except that it
does not express the recumbent action of the leaves. The proper
representation of ground-leafage has never yet been attempted in any
botanical work whatever, and as, in recumbent plants, their grouping and
action can only be seen from above, the plates of them should always have a
dark and rugged background, not only to indicate the position of the eye,
but to relieve the forms of the leaves as they were intended to be shown. I
will try to give some examples in the course of this year.
2. I find also, sorrowfully, that the references are wrong in three, if not
more, places in that chapter.
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