Now it is easy to conceive that flowers of this kind, growing in close clusters, may, in process of time, have extended their outside petals rather than the interior ones (as the outer flowers of the clusters of many umbellifers actually do), and thus elongated and variously distorted forms have established themselves; then if the stalk is attached to the side instead of the base of the tube, its base becomes a spur, and thus all the grotesque forms of the mints, violets, and larkspurs gradually might be composed. But, however this may be, there is one great tribe of plants separate from the rest, and of which the influence seems shed upon the rest in different degrees: and these would give the impression not so much of having been developed by change as of being stamped with a character of their own, more or less serpentine or dragon-like. And I think you will find it convenient to call these generally Draconidæ; disregarding their present ugly botanical name, which I do not care even to write once--you may take for their principal types the foxglove, snap-dragon, and calceolaria; and you will find they all agree in a tendency to decorate themselves by spots, and with bosses or swollen places in their leaves, as if they had been touched by poison. The spot of the foxglove is especially strange, because it draws the color out of the tissue all round it, as if it had been stung, and as if the central color was really an inflamed spot with paleness round. Then also they carry to its extreme the decoration by bulging or pouting the petal; often beautifully used by other flowers in a minor degree, like the beating out of bosses in hollow silver, as in the kalmia, beating out apparently in each petal by the stamens instead of a hammer; or the borage, pouting inward; but the snap-dragons and calceolarias carry it to its extreme.