Alexandre Dumas - "La dame de Monsoreau v.3"

DAVID GRAHAM PHILLIPS - "The Deluge"

Samuel Wilberforce - "The Rocky Island"

John Oxenham - "Bees in Amber"

Annual Bibliography of Commonwealth Literature 2007
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

The Botanic Garden

E >> Erasmus Darwin >> The Botanic Garden




[_Unfolds his larva-form_. l. 458. The flower bursts forth from its
larva, the herb, naked and perfect like a butterfly from its chrysolis;
winged with its corol; wing-sheathed by its calyx; consisting alone of
the organs of reproduction. The males, or stamens, have their anthers
replete with a prolific powder containing the vivifying fovilla: in the
females, or pistils, exists the ovary, terminated by the tubular stigma.
When the anthers burst and shed their bags of dust, the male fovilla is
received by the prolific lymph of the stigma, and produces the seed or
egg, which is nourished in the ovary. System of Vegetables translated
from Linneus by the Lichfield Society, p. 10.]


XII. 1. "If prouder branches with exuberance rude
Point their green gems, their barren shoots protrude;
Wound them, ye SYLPHS! with little knives, or bind
A wiry ringlet round the swelling rind;
465 Bisect with chissel fine the root below,
Or bend to earth the inhospitable bough.
So shall each germ with new prolific power
Delay the leaf-bud, and expand the flower;
Closed in the _Style_ the tender pith shall end,
470 The lengthening Wood in circling _Stamens_ bend;
The smoother Rind its soft embroidery spread
In vaulted _Petals_ o'er their fertile bed;
While the rough Bark, in circling mazes roll'd,
Forms the green _Cup_ with many a wrinkled fold;
475 And each small bud-scale spreads its foliage hard,
Firm round the callow germ, a _Floral Guard_.


[_Wound them, ye Sylphs!_ l. 463. Mr. Whitmill advised to bind some of
the most vigorous shoots with strong wire, and even some of the large
roots; and Mr. Warner cuts, what he calls a wild worm about the body of
the tree, or scores the bark quite to the wood like a screw with a sharp
knife. Bradley on Gardening, Vol. II. p. 155. Mr. Fitzgerald produced
flowers and fruit on wall trees by cutting off a part of the bark. Phil.
Trans. Ann. 1761. M. Buffon produced the same effect by a straight
bandage put round a branch, Act. Paris, Ann. 1738, and concludes that an
ingrafted branch bears better from its vessels being compressed by the
callous.

A compleat cylinder of the bark about an inch in height was cut off from
the branch of a pear tree against a wall in Mr. Howard's garden at
Lichfield about five years ago, the circumcised part is now not above
half the diameter of the branch above and below it, yet this branch has
been full of fruit every year since, when the other branches of the tree
bore only sparingly. I lately observed that the leaves of this wounded
branch were smaller and paler, and the fruit less in size, and ripened
sooner than on the other parts of the tree. Another branch has the bark
taken off not quite all round with much the same effect.

The theory of this curious vegetable fact has been esteemed difficult,
but receives great light from the foregoing account of the individuality
of buds. A flower-bud dies, when it has perfected its seed, like an
annual plant, and hence requires no place on the bark for new roots to
pass downwards; but on the contrary leaf-buds, as they advance into
shoots, form new buds in the axilla of every leaf, which new buds
require new roots to pass down the bark, and thus thicken as well as
elongate the branch, now if a wire or string be tied round the bark,
many of these new roots cannot descend, and thence more of the buds will
be converted into flower-buds.

It is customary to debark oak-trees in the spring, which are intended to
be felled in the ensuing autumn; because the bark comes off easier at
this season, and the sap-wood, or alburnum, is believed to become harder
and more durable, if the tree remains till the end of summer. The trees
thus stripped of their bark put forth shoots as usual with acorns on the
6th 7th and 8th joint, like vines; but in the branches I examined, the
joints of the debarked trees were much shorter than those of other oak-
trees; the acorns were more numerous; and no new buds were produced
above the joints which bore acorns. From hence it appears that the
branches of debarked oak-trees produce fewer leaf-buds, and more flower-
buds, which last circumstance I suppose must depend on their being
sooner or later debarked in the vernal months. And, secondly, that the
new buds of debarked oak-trees continue to obtain moisture from the
alburnum after the season of the ascent of sap in other vegetables
ceases; which in this unnatural state of the debarked tree may act as
capillary tubes, like the alburnum of the small debarked cylinder of a
pear-tree abovementioned; or may continue to act as placental vessels,
as happens to the animal embryon in cases of superfetation; when the
fetus continues a month or two in the womb beyond its usual time, of
which some instances have been recorded, the placenta continues to
supply perhaps the double office both of nutrition and of respiration.]

[_And bend to earth_. l. 466. Mr. Hitt in his treatise on fruit trees
observes that if a vigorous branch of a wall tree be bent to the
horizon, or beneath it, it looses its vigour and becomes a bearing
branch. The theory of this I suppose to depend on the difficulty with
which the leaf-shoots can protrude the roots necessary for their new
progeny of buds upwards along the bended branch to the earth contrary to
their natural habits or powers, whence more flower-shoots are produced
which do not require new roots to pass along the bark of the bended
branch, but which let their offspring, the seeds, fall upon the earth
and seek roots for themselves.]

[_With new prolific power_. l. 467. About Midsummer the new buds are
formed, but it is believed by some of the Linnean school, that these
buds may in their early state be either converted into flower-buds or
leaf-buds according to the vigour of the vegetating branch. Thus if the
upper part of a branch be cut away, the buds near the extremity of the
remaining stem, having a greater proportional supply of nutriment, or
possessing a greater facility of shooting their roots, or absorbent
vessels, down the bark, will become leaf-buds, which might otherwise
have been flower-buds. And the contrary as explained in note on l. 463.
of this Canto.]

[_Closed in the style_. l. 469. "I conceive the medulla of a plant to
consist of a bundle of nervous fibres, and that the propelling vital
power separates their uppermost extremities. These, diverging, penetrate
the bark, which is now gelatinous, and become multiplied in the new gem,
or leaf-bud. The ascending vessels of the bark being thus divided by the
nervous fibres, which perforate it, and the ascent of its fluids being
thus impeded, the bark is extended into a leaf. But the flower is
produced, when the protrusion of the medulla is greater than the
retention of the including cortical part; whence the substance of the
bark is expanded in the calyx; that of the rind, (or interior bark,) in
the corol; that of the wood in the stamens, that of the medulla in the
pistil. Vegetation thus terminates in the production of new life, the
ultimate medullary and cortical fibres being collected in the seeds."
Linnei Systema Veget. p. 6. edit. 14.]


2. "Where cruder juices swell the leafy vein,
Stint the young germ, the tender blossom stain;
On each lop'd shoot a softer scion bind,
480 Pith press'd to pith, and rind applied to rind,
So shall the trunk with loftier crest ascend,
And wide in air its happier arms extend;
Nurse the new buds, admire the leaves unknown,
And blushing bend with fruitage not its own.


[_Nurse the new buds_. l. 483. Mr. Fairchild budded a passion-tree,
whose leaves were spotted with yellow, into one which bears long fruit.
The buds did not take, nevertheless in a fortnight yellow spots began to
shew themselves about three feet above the inoculation, and in a short
time afterwards yellow spots appeared on a shoot which came out of the
ground from another part of the plant. Bradley, Vol. II. p. 129. These
facts are the more curious since from experiments of ingrafting red
currants on black (Ib. Vol. II.) the fruit does not acquire any change
of flavour, and by many other experiments neither colour nor any other
change is produced in the fruit ingrafted on other stocks.

There is an apple described in Bradley's work which is said to have one
side of it a sweet fruit which boils soft, and the other side a sour
fruit which boils hard, which Mr. Bradley so long ago as the year 1721
ingeniously ascribes to the farina of one of these apples impregnating
the other, which would seem the more probable if we consider that each
division of an apple is a separate womb, and may therefore have a
separate impregnation like puppies of different kinds in one litter. The
same is said to have occurred in oranges and lemons, and grapes of
different colours.]


485 "Thus when in holy triumph Aaron trod,
And offer'd on the shrine his mystic rod;
First a new bark its silken tissue weaves,
New buds emerging widen into leaves;
Fair fruits protrude, enascent flowers expand,
490 And blush and tremble round the living wand.

XIII. 1. "SYLPHS! on each Oak-bud wound the wormy galls,
With pigmy spears, or crush the venom'd balls;
Fright the green Locust from his foamy bed,
Unweave the Caterpillar's gluey thread;
495 Chase the fierce Earwig, scare the bloated Toad,
Arrest the snail upon his slimy road;
Arm with sharp thorns the Sweet-brier's tender wood,
And dash the Cynips from her damask bud;
Steep in ambrosial dews the Woodbine's bells,
500 And drive the Night-moth from her honey'd cells.
So where the Humming-bird in Chili's bowers
On murmuring pinions robs the pendent flowers;
Seeks, where fine pores their dulcet balm distill,
And sucks the treasure with proboscis-bill;
505 Fair CYPREPEDIA with successful guile
Knits her smooth brow, extinguishes her smile;
A Spiders bloated paunch and jointed arms
Hide her fine form, and mask her blushing charms;
In ambush sly the mimic warrior lies,
510 And on quick wing the panting plunderer flies.


[_Fair Cyprepedia_. l. 505. The cyprepedium from South America is
supposed to be of larger size and brighter colours than that from North
America from which this print is taken; it has a large globular nectary
about the size of a pidgeon's egg of a fleshy colour, and an incision or
depression on its upper part, much resembling the body of the large
American spider; this globular nectary is attached to divergent slender
petals not unlike the legs of the same animal. This spider is called by
Linneus Arenea avicularia, with a convex orbicular thorax, the center
transversely excavated, he adds that it catches small birds as well as
insects, and has the venemous bite of a serpent. System Nature, Tom. I.
p. 1034. M. Lonvilliers de Poincy, (Histoire Nat. des Antilles, Cap.
xiv. art. III.) calls it Phalange, and describes the body to be the size
of a pidgeon's egg, with a hollow on its back like a navel, and mentions
its catching the humming-bird in its strong nets.

The similitude of this flower to this great spider seems to be a
vegetable contrivance to prevent the humming-bird from plundering its
honey. About Matlock in Derbyshire the fly-ophris is produced, the
nectary of which so much resembles the small wall-bee, perhaps the apis
ichneumonea, that it may be easily mistaken for it at a small distance.
It is probable that by this means it may often escape being plundered.
See note on lonicera in the next poem.

A bird of our own country called a willow-wren (Motacilla) runs up the
stem of the crown-imperial (Frittillaria coronalis) and sips the
pendulous drops within its petals. This species of Motacilla is called
by Ray Regulus non cristatus. White's Hist. of Selborne.]

[Illustration: _Cypripedium. London, Published Dec'r 1st 1791 by J.
Johnson, St. Paul's Church Yard._]


2. "Shield the young Harvest from devouring blight,
The Smut's dark poison, and the Mildew white;
Deep-rooted Mould, and Ergot's horn uncouth,
And break the Canker's desolating tooth.
515 First in one point the festering wound confin'd
Mines unperceived beneath the shrivel'd rin'd;
Then climbs the branches with increasing strength,
Spreads as they spread, and lengthens with their length;
--Thus the slight wound ingraved on glass unneal'd
520 Runs in white lines along the lucid field;
Crack follows crack, to laws elastic just,
And the frail fabric shivers into dust.


[_Shield the young harvest_. l. 511. Linneus enumerates but four
diseases of plants; Erysyche, the white mucor or mould, with sessile
tawny heads, with which the leaves are sprinkled, as is frequent on the
hop, humulus, maple, acer, &c. Rubigo, the ferrugineous powder sprinkled
under the leaves frequent in lady's mantle, alchemilla, &c.

Clavus, when the seeds grow out into larger horns black without, as in
rye. This is called Ergot by the french writers.

Ustulago, when the fruit instead of seed produces a black powder, as in
barley, oats, &c. To which perhaps the honey-dew ought to have been
added, and the canker, in the former of which the nourishing fluid of
the plant seems to be exsuded by a retrograde motion of the cutaneous
lymphatics, as in the sweating sickness of the last century. The latter
is a phagedenic ulcer of the bark, very destructive to young apple-
trees, and which in cherry-trees is attended with a deposition of gum
arabic, which often terminates in the death of the tree.]

[_Ergot's horn_. l. 513. There is a disease frequently affects the rye
in France, and sometimes in England in moist seasons, which is called
Ergot, or horn seed; the grain becomes considerably elongated and is
either straight or crooked, containing black meal along with the white,
and appears to be pierced by insects, which were probably the cause of
the disease. Mr. Duhamel ascribes it to this cause, and compares it to
galls on oak-leaves. By the use of this bad grain amongst the poor
diseases have been produced attended with great debility and
mortification of the extremities both in France and England. Dict.
Raison. art. Siegle. Philosop. Transact.]

[_On glass unneal'd_. l. 519. The glass makers occasionally make what
they call _proofs_, which are cooled hastily, whereas the other glass
vessels are removed from warmer ovens to cooler ones, and suffered to
cool by slow degrees, which is called annealing, or nealing them. If an
unnealed glass be scratched by even a grain of sand falling into it, it
will seem to consider of it for some time, or even a day, and will then
crack into a thousand pieces.

The same happens to a smooth surfaced lead-ore in Derbyshire, the
workmen having cleared a large face of it scratch it with picks, and in
a few hours many tons of it crack to pieces and fall, with a kind of
explosion. Whitehurst's Theory of Earth.

Glass dropped into cold water, called Prince Rupert's drops, explode
when a small part of their tails are broken off, more suddenly indeed,
but probably from the same cause. Are the internal particles of these
elastic bodies kept so far from each other by the external crust that
they are nearly in a state of repulsion into which state they are thrown
by their vibrations from any violence applied? Or, like elastic balls in
certain proportions suspended in contact with each other, can motion
once began be increased by their elasticity, till the whole explodes?
And can this power be applied to any mechanical purposes?]


XIV. I. "SYLPHS! if with morn destructive Eurus springs,
O, clasp the Harebel with your velvet wings;
525 Screen with thick leaves the Jasmine as it blows,
And shake the white rime from the shuddering Rose;
Whilst Amaryllis turns with graceful ease
Her blushing beauties, and eludes the breeze.--
SYLPHS! if at noon the Fritillary droops,
530 With drops nectareous hang her nodding cups;
Thin clouds of Gossamer in air display,
And hide the vale's chaste Lily from the ray;
Whilst Erythrina o'er her tender flower
Bends all her leaves, and braves the sultry hour;--
535 Shield, when cold Hesper sheds his dewy light,
Mimosa's soft sensations from the night;
Fold her thin foilage, close her timid flowers,
And with ambrosial slumbers guard her bowers;
O'er each warm wall while Cerea flings her arms,
540 And wastes on night's dull eye a blaze of charms.


[Illustration: _Erythrina Corallodendron. London Published Dec'r 1st by
J. Johnson St. Paul's Church Yard._]

[_With ambrosial slumbers_. l. 538. Many vegetables during the night do
not seem to respire, but to sleep like the dormant animals and insects
in winter. This appears from the mimosa and many other plants closing
the upper sides of their leaves together in their sleep, and thus
precluding that side of them from both light and air. And from many
flowers closing up the polished or interior side of their petals, which
we have also endeavoured to shew to be a respiratory organ.

The irritability of plants is abundantly evinced by the absorption and
pulmonary circulation of their juices; their sensibility is shewn by the
approaches of the males to the females, and of the females to the males
in numerous instances; and, as the essential circumstance of sleep
consists in the temporary abolition of voluntary power alone, the sleep
of plants evinces that they possess voluntary power; which also
indisputably appears in many of them by closing their petals or their
leaves during cold, or rain, or darkness, or from mechanic violence.]


2. Round her tall Elm with dewy fingers twine
The gadding tendrils of the adventurous Vine;
From arm to arm in gay festoons suspend
Her fragrant flowers, her graceful foliage bend;
545 Swell with sweet juice her vermil orbs, and feed
Shrined in transparent pulp her pearly seed;
Hang round the Orange all her silver bells,
And guard her fragrance with Hesperian spells;
Bud after bud her polish'd leaves unfold,
550 And load her branches with successive gold.
So the learn'd Alchemist exulting sees
Rise in his bright matrass DIANA'S trees;
Drop after drop, with just delay he pours
The red-fumed acid on Potosi's ores;
555 With sudden flash the fierce bullitions rise,
And wide in air the gas phlogistic flies;
Slow shoot, at length, in many a brilliant mass
Metallic roots across the netted glass;
Branch after branch extend their silver stems,
560 Bud into gold, and blossoms into gems.


[_Diana's trees_, l. 552. The chemists and astronomers from the earliest
antiquity have used the same characters to represent the metals and the
planets, which were most probably outlines or abstracts of the original
hieroglyphic figures of Egypt. These afterwards acquired niches in their
temples, and represented Gods as well as metals and planets; whence
silver is called Diana, or the moon, in the books of alchemy.

The process for making Diana's silver tree is thus described by Lemeri.
Dissolve one ounce of pure silver in acid of nitre very pure and
moderately strong; mix this solution with about twenty ounces of
distilled water; add to this two ounces of mercury, and let it remain at
rest. In about four days there will form upon the mercury a tree of
silver with branches imitating vegetation.

1. As the mercury has a greater affinity than silver with the nitrous
acid, the silver becomes precipitated; and, being deprived of the
nitrous oxygene by the mercury, sinks down in its metallic form and
lustre. 2. The attraction between silver and mercury, which causes them
readily to amalgamate together, occasions the precipitated silver to
adhere to the surface of the mercury in preference to any other part of
the vessel. 3. The attraction of the particles of the precipitated
silver to each other causes the beginning branches to thicken and
elongate into trees and shrubs rooted on the mercury. For other
circumstances concerning this beautiful experiment see Mr. Keir's
Chemical Dictionary, art. Arbor Dianae; a work perhaps of greater
utility to mankind than the lost Alexandrian Library; the continuation
of which is so eagerly expected by all, who are occupied in the arts, or
attached to the sciences.]


So sits enthron'd in vegetable pride
Imperial KEW by Thames's glittering side;
Obedient sails from realms unfurrow'd bring
For her the unnam'd progeny of spring;
565 Attendant Nymphs her dulcet mandates hear,
And nurse in fostering arms the tender year,
Plant the young bulb, inhume the living seed,
Prop the weak stem, the erring tendril lead;
Or fan in glass-built fanes the stranger flowers
570 With milder gales, and steep with warmer showers.
Delighted Thames through tropic umbrage glides,
And flowers antarctic, bending o'er his tides;
Drinks the new tints, the sweets unknown inhales,
And calls the sons of science to his vales.
575 In one bright point admiring Nature eyes
The fruits and foliage of discordant skies,
Twines the gay floret with the fragrant bough,
And bends the wreath round GEORGE'S royal brow.
--Sometimes retiring, from the public weal
580 One tranquil hour the ROYAL PARTNERS steal;
Through glades exotic pass with step sublime,
Or mark the growths of Britain's happier clime;
With beauty blossom'd, and with virtue blaz'd,
Mark the fair Scions, that themselves have rais'd;
585 Sweet blooms the Rose, the towering Oak expands,
The Grace and Guard of Britain's golden lands.

XV. SYLPHS! who, round earth on purple pinions borne,
Attend the radiant chariot of the morn;
Lead the gay hours along the ethereal hight,
590 And on each dun meridian shower the light;
SYLPHS! who from realms of equatorial day
To climes, that shudder in the polar ray,
From zone to zone pursue on shifting wing,
The bright perennial journey of the spring;
595 Bring my rich Balms from Mecca's hallow'd glades,
Sweet flowers, that glitter in Arabia's shades;
Fruits, whose fair forms in bright succession glow
Gilding the Banks of Arno, or of Po;
Each leaf, whose fragrant steam with ruby lip
600 Gay China's nymphs from pictur'd vases sip;
Each spicy rind, which sultry India boasts,
Scenting the night-air round her breezy coasts;
Roots whose bold stems in bleak Siberia blow,
And gem with many a tint the eternal snow;
605 Barks, whose broad umbrage high in ether waves
O'er Ande's steeps, and hides his golden caves;
--And, where yon oak extends his dusky shoots
Wide o'er the rill, that bubbles from his roots;
Beneath whose arms, protected from the storm
610 A turf-built altar rears it's rustic form;
SYLPHS! with religious hands fresh garlands twine,
And deck with lavish pomp HYGEIA'S shrine.

"Call with loud voice the Sisterhood, that dwell
On floating cloud, wide wave, or bubbling well;
615 Stamp with charm'd foot, convoke the alarmed Gnomes
From golden beds, and adamantine domes;
Each from her sphere with beckoning arm invite,
Curl'd with red flame, the Vestal Forms of light.
Close all your spotted wings, in lucid ranks
620 Press with your bending knees the crowded banks,
Cross your meek arms, incline your wreathed brows,
And win the Goddess with unwearied vows.

"Oh, wave, HYGEIA! o'er BRITANNIA'S throne
Thy serpent-wand, and mark it for thy own;
625 Lead round her breezy coasts thy guardian trains,
Her nodding forests, and her waving plains;
Shed o'er her peopled realms thy beamy smile,
And with thy airy temple crown her isle!"

The GODDESS ceased,--and calling from afar
630 The wandering Zephyrs, joins them to her car;
Mounts with light bound, and graceful, as she bends,
Whirls the long lash, the flexile rein extends;
On whispering wheels the silver axle slides,
Climbs into air, and cleaves the crystal tides;
635 Burst from its pearly chains, her amber hair
Streams o'er her ivory shoulders, buoy'd in air;
Swells her white veil, with ruby clasp confined
Round her fair brow, and undulates behind;
The lessening coursers rise in spiral rings,
640 Pierce the slow-sailing clouds, and stretch their shadowy wings.




CONTENTS

OF

THE NOTES.


CANTO I.


Rosicrucian machinery. 73

All bodies are immersed in the matter of heat. Particles of bodies do
not touch each other. 97

Gradual progress of the formation of the earth, and of plants and
animals. Monstrous births 101

Fixed stars approach towards each other, they were projected from chaos
by explosion, and the planets projected from them 105

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