Let us continue our excursion into the realm of the plants. The quinary order allots to the flower five petals arranged in a whorl of perfect accuracy. Well, a good many corollas depart from the normal grouping, as instance the labiate and the personate corollas. In the former, five lobes compose the limb expanding at the end of a tubular portion and represent the five regulation petals. They are arranged in two wide-open lips, one pointing upwards and one downwards. The upper lip has two lobes, the lower three. The personate corolla likewise is divided into two lips, the upper having two lobes, the lower three; only, the latter is expanded into an arch that closes the entrance to the flower. A pressure of the fingers on the sides opens the two lips, which close again as soon as the pressure ceases. Hence a certain resemblance to the jaws—the mufle or gueule—of an animal, a resemblance which has earned for the plant in which this formation is most clearly seen, the name of Snapdragon, muflier or gueule-de-loup. A certain analogy has also been drawn between the appearance of the two thick lips of the snapdragon and the exaggerated features of the masks, or personæ, with which the actors in the ancient theatres used to cover their faces to represent the characters whom they were playing. Hence the expression “personate corolla.” The anomaly of the two-lipped corolla entails modifications in the stamens, which have to adapt themselves to the exigencies of the space enclosed, which is narrower at one point and roomier at another. Of the five stamens, one is suppressed, while often leaving a vestige at its base, as a certificate that it was once there. The four others are grouped into two pairs of unequal length, with a tendency to the suppression of the lesser pair. The sage achieves this suppression. It has only two stamens, those of the longer pair. Moreover, on each of the staminal filaments it preserves only half an anther. According to the rule in the vast majority of cases, an anther consists of two compartments, placed back to back and separated by a slender partition, known as the connective. The sage exaggerates the size of this connective and makes of it the beam of a balance placed crosswise on the filament. At the end of one arm of this beam is the half of an anther, that is to say, a pollen-sac; at the other end is nothing. The whole of the staminal verticil, all save that which is strictly necessary, is sacrificed to the beautiful strangeness of the corolla.