must keep the
word to its proper meaning, and, when we want to write Latin, call it
'petiolus;' when we want to write English, call it 'stalk,' meaning always
fruit or flower stalk. {131}

I cannot find when the word 'stalk' first appears in English:--its
derivation will be given presently.

5. Gather next a hawthorn leaf. That also has a stalk; but you can't shake
the leaf off it. It, and the leaf, are essentially one; for the sustaining
fibre runs up into every ripple or jag of the leaf's edge: and its section
is different from that of the flower-stalk; it is no more round, but has an
upper and under surface, quite different from each other. It will be
better, however, to take a larger leaf to examine this structure in.
Cabbage, cauliflower, or rhubarb, would any of them be good, but don't grow
wild in the luxuriance I want. So, if you please, we will take a leaf of
burdock, (Arctium Lappa,) the principal business of that plant being
clearly to grow leaves wherewith to adorn fore-grounds.[35]

[Illustration: FIG. 13.]

6. The outline of it in Sowerby is not an intelligent one, and I have not
time to draw it but in the rudest way myself; Fig. 13, _a_; with
perspectives of the elementary form below, _b_, _c_, and d. By help of
which, if you will construct a burdock leaf in paper, my rude outline (_a_)
may tell the rest of what I want you to see.

[Illustration: FIG. 14.]

Take a sheet of stout note paper, Fig. 14, A, double it sharply down the
centre, by the dotted line, then give it the two cuts at _a_ and _b_, and
double those pieces sharply back, as at B; then, opening them again, cut
the whole {132} into the form C; and then, pulling up the corners _c d_,
stitch them together with a loose thread so that the points _c_ and _d_
shall be within half an inch of each other; and you will have a kind of
triangular scoop, or shovel, with a stem, by which you can sufficiently
hold it, D.

7. And from this easily constructed and tenable model, you may learn at
once these following main facts about all leaves. {133}

[I.] That they are not flat, but, however slightly, always hollowed into
craters, or raised into hills, in one or another direction; so that any
drawable outline of them does not in the least represent the real extent of
their surfaces; and until you know how to draw a cup, or a mountain,
rightly, you have no chance of drawing a leaf. My simple artist readers of
long ago, when I told them to draw leaves,