But these wonders of our own do not approach to what may be seen in foreign lands, especially in South America. There grows a plant, looked on and named in the same spirit as the passion flower, as another stamp and token of the Christian faith, set by the hands of its Author, the beautiful orchid called by the Spaniards of Panama the Espiritu Santo, because it is just like a hovering dove of the purest white, a fit emblem indeed for Whit-Sunday.

Another dove orchis grows there likewise, a large tall plant, with flowers like a white dove on her nest, her head turned back and her wings slightly raised and touched with purple. Another orchid is like a whole shower of pale purple and white butterflies, coming down from a bough, and this, like many of the tribe, is a parasite, that is, it grows on the limbs of trees, like mistletoe; while there is another kind more like sticks of coral than anything else, the whole plant being of the most glowing scarlet, except the flowers, which are deep purple. These four I have seen in hot-houses, and marvelled at; there are many more that are grown in the same manner in England, and that a few lucky people are able to go and admire, but what must they not be in their own home?

Some grow from the earth, some hang down from the trees, some sit on rocks amid moss, some beautify the decaying and fallen trees, and their perfume fills the woods at night. Their forms are beyond everything astonishing. The monkey, the mosquito, the ant, are only a few of them; there are hovering birds and every wondrous shape, so that travellers declare that the lifetime of an artist would be too short to give pictures of all the kinds that inhabit the valleys of Peru alone.

CHAPTER XXXVIII

FLAGS

WHEN France was true and loyal, and her sovereign gloried in the title of "Most Christian King," her banner was the same as that of these green hosts; and St. Louis led his Crusade beneath the waving fleur-de-lys, and wore it marked on his robe and on his shield, seeing in its threefold formation an emblem of the highest mystery of the Christian faith.

I cannot say that it was well represented in those days; and the thing with three points carved in stone, or represented in gold on a blue ground, which we call the "fleur-de-lys," though graceful and beautiful in form, and recalling many a bright memory of old faith and loyalty, is a very poor likeness of the lovely iris, or flagflower; so poor, indeed, that we could hardly guess it was intended for the same.

The very name of fleur-de-lys is a mistake, as modern botanists have settled it, for it means lily-flower; and the iris in no respect resembles the lily, which we shall find in the sixth class instead of the third.

Iris, the botanical name of the flag or fleur-de-lys, means the eye of heaven, and was given by the Greeks and Romans to the rainbow, which they thought the path

of the beautiful messenger of the gods.

They were not so far wrong in this: or perhaps they had some dim tradition that the lovely bow in the cloud is really a messenger of mercy to us from heaven.

The name was given to the flower from its varied tints, blending into each other as the colours do in the rainbow. Purple, blue, and yellow, of all shades, are to be found in these noble flowers, and of such depth and richness that no colouring equals them.

We have two English kinds of iris; the yellow one which grows by the river side, and which perhaps you know by the name of the yellow flag; and the stinking flag, a delicate purple one, with a very disagreeable smell, which grows in hedges, and ornaments them in autumn with its splendid scarlet fruit. The great deep purple iris, in gardens, comes from Syria, the little red purple one from Persia. It was introduced by Queen Henrietta Maria, who was very fond of flowers; and the blue and yellow sort, with the very narrow leaves, which we commonly call the fleur-de-lys, is from Hungary.

When the irises come into blossom you will see their stem coming curiously out from an opening in the edge of their broad, and, for the most part, sword-shaped leaves, and bearing a thick sheath packed up in the same hard straight leaves, containing one or two buds, which, like those of the daffodil, are enclosed in a thin transparent skin, like silver paper, which peels off as the blossom unfolds. I daresay you would be puzzled at the appearance of the flower; it stands very upright, on a green fleshy stem, and seems to consist of nothing but nine petals, in threes: three broad beautiful ones, turning over and hanging down, with an exquisite pattern in blue or yellow, or shades of both, wonderfully blended

together; three little plain ones between these larger ones, standing up rather pertly; and three more middle sized, of a lighter colour, and with a ridge down the middle, shutting down like a lid on the inner side of the large ones. Where are all the stamens and pistils? We must make a few researches. Suppose we see what is so carefully nursed under that lid. Take hold of it gently by that pretty jagged fringed edge which makes a canopy over its doorway, lift it up and peep under it. How beautiful! It is like looking into a little house; and such a house as it is, with such marblings and paintings, of streaks of black, or deep blue, or rich yellow! And all along the middle of the great outer petal is a wonderful crest, or rather mane, of beautiful little soft thick hairs, forming a downy bed, exactly fitting the shape of the long, narrow, stiff inhabitant of this lovely little dwelling. I daresay you have recognised this beautifully lodged gentleman to be a stamen, with a very long anther, and his two brothers live in the other two dwelling-places near at hand. It is very curious that they should thus lodge apart, instead of being sociably together like the stamens of every other flower I know. Now, where is the pistil? Is it not to be found? Look beneath the flower at the stem. This swelling part, regularly divided into three ridges, is the germ; the slender part on which the corolla rests is the style; and the stigma- Why! the stigma is what we have been calling the middle-sized petals, the lids of the little box containing the stamens. Certainly the iris is as wonderful a flower as it is beautiful. It is all, as you see, in threes; three large petals, three small, three stamens, three divisions of the stigma, three of the germ, and there will be three seed-vessels, and three seeds in each vessel. Last summer I found the iris

stamen houses turned to a purpose I did not expect. They were the very larder whither the spider invited the fly. In a large white iris a green vagabond spider, of the size and colour of a green pea, had his dwelling. There, for a full week, we watched him, lying in wait in the middle of the flower, and storing his victims in its divisions. There were slain and devoured in one week a dumbledore, two bees, and flies beyond reckoning, first caught, then kept awhile in the yellow and white larder, their juices sucked, and at last thrown down to make way for a fresh prisoner. The flower faded in time, and the spider disappeared, having taught us a new use for the iris blossom.

One

The roots of some irises are bulbous, others are creeping, especially those that grow near the water. kind, called orris root, is used for a perfume.

The gladiolus, little sword, or corn-flag, is in some points like the iris; it is a most beautiful flower, but only one sort is very common in gardens here; this is the pink kind, which ornaments the corn fields of Italy.

And not distantly related to these flags are the banners of spring, the crocus and the snowdrop, which we had in Chapter I. Also the daffodil of Chapter II., on March

flowers.