'Oh, we'll read about it, Queen Esther. "Ad usum," "Belgae, Austria." These coins are delightful. See here--don't you want to go for a walk?'
'Oh yes! I've had one walk to-day already, and it just makes me want another. Did you see my flowers?'
'Here's the liverleaf, and anemone, and bloodroot; and we couldn't find the columbine, but it must be out. Christopher calls them all sorts of hard names, that I can't remember.'
'_Anemone_ is anemone, at any rate. These two, Esther, this and the _Hepatica_, belong to one great family, the family of the Crowfoots--Ranunculaceae.'
'No it isn't; it is easier and easier. See, these belong to one family; so you learn to know them as relations, and then you can remember them.'
'How do you know they are of the same family?'
'Well, they have the family features. They all have an acrid sap or juice, exogenous plants, with many stamens. These are the stamens, do you know? They have calyx and corolla both, and the corolla has separate petals, see; and the Ranunculaceae have the petals and sepals deciduous, and the leaves generally cut, as you see these are. They are what you may call a bitter family; it runs in the blood, that is to say, in the juice of them; and a good many of the members of the family are downright wicked, that is, poisonous.'
'Not a bit more queer than the things are I am talking of. Now this _Sanguinaria_ belongs to the Papaveraceae--the poppy family.'
'Does it! But it does not look like them, like poppies.'
'This coloured juice that you see when you break the stem, is one of the family marks of this family. I won't trouble you with the others. But you must learn to know them, Queen Esther. King Solomon knew every plant from the royal cedar to the hyssop on the wall; and I am sure a queen ought to know as much. Now the blood of the Papaveraceae has a taint also; it is apt to have a narcotic quality.'
'Hm!' said Dallas; 'that's as you take it. It isn't healthy to go so fast asleep that you never can wake up again.'
'Can people do that?' asked Esther in astonishment.
'Yes. Did you never hear of people killing themselves with laudanum, or opium?'
'I wonder why the poppy family was made so?'
'That's when people take too much of them. They are very good for medicine sometimes, Queen Esther.'