ots, of his vines.

We must keep this word 'stolon,' therefore, for these young suckers
springing from an old root. Its derivation is uncertain; but the main idea
meant by it is one of uselessness,--sprouting without occasion or fruit;
and the words 'stolidus' and 'stolid' are really its derivatives, though we
have lost their sense in English by partly confusing them with 'solid'
which they have nothing to do with. A 'stolid' person is essentially a
'useless sucker' of society; frequently very leafy and graceful, but with
no good in him.

[Illustration: FIG. 15.]

19. Nevertheless, I won't allow our vegetable 'stolons' to be despised.
Some of quite the most beautiful forms of leafage belong to them;--even the
foliage of the olive itself is never seen to the same perfection on the
upper branches as in the young ground-rods in which the dual groups of
leaves crowd themselves in their haste into clusters of three.

But, for our point of Latin history, remember always {143} that in 400
B.C., just a year before the death of Socrates at Athens, this family of
Stolid persons manifested themselves at Rome, shooting up from plebeian
roots into places where they had no business; and preparing the way for the
degradation of the entire Roman race under the Empire; their success being
owed, remember also, to the faults of the patricians, for one of the laws
passed by Calvus Stolo was that the Sibylline books should be in custody of
ten men, of whom five should be plebeian, "that no falsifications might be
introduced in favour of the patricians."

20. All this time, however, we have got no name for the prettiest of all
stems,--that of annual flowers growing high from among their ground leaves,
like lilies of the valley, and saxifrages, and the tall primulas--of which
this pretty type, Fig. 15, was cut for me by Mr. Burgess years ago;
admirable in its light outline of the foamy globe of flowers, supported and
balanced in the meadow breezes on that elastic rod of slenderest life.

What shall we call it? We had better rest from our study of terms a little,
and do a piece of needful classifying, before we try to name it.

21. My younger readers will find it easy to learn, and convenient to
remember, for a beginning of their science, {144} the names of twelve great
families of cinquefoiled flowers,[39] of which the first group of three, is
for the most part golden, the second, blue, the third, purple, and the
fourth, red.

And the