10. A pure _cup_, you remember it is; that much at least {71} you cannot but remember, of poppy-form among the cornfields; and it is best, in beginning, to think of every flower as essentially a cup. There are flat ones, but you will find that most of these are really groups of flowers, not single blossoms; and there are out-of-the-way and quaint ones, very difficult to define as of any shape; but even these have a cup to begin with, deep down in them. You had better take the idea of a cup or vase, as the first, simplest, and most general form of true flower. The botanists call it a corolla, which means a garland, or a kind of crown; and the word is a very good one, because it indicates that the flower-cup is made, as our clay cups are, on a potter's wheel; that it is essentially a _revolute_ form--a whirl or (botanically) 'whorl' of leaves; in reality successive round the base of the urn they form. 11. Perhaps, however, you think poppies in general are not much like cups. But the flower in my hand is a--poverty-_stricken_ poppy, I was going to write,--poverty-_strengthened_ poppy, I mean. On richer ground, it would have gushed into flaunting breadth of untenable purple--flapped its inconsistent scarlet vaguely to the wind--dropped the pride of its petals over my hand in an hour after I gathered it. But this little rough-bred thing, a Campagna pony of a poppy, is as bright and strong to-day as yesterday. So that I can see exactly where the leaves join or lap over each other; and when I look down into the cup, find it to be composed of four leaves altogether,--two smaller, set within two larger. {72} [Illustration: FIG. 4.]