It is the soldering of the lobes which gives
the lotus leaves their singular form,—the
resemblance to basins or flat hats which makes
them serviceable as vessels in India.  In
addition to having the lobes soldered together
like the hellebore, the limb of the lotus leaf
is round, with the nervures branching off
equally from the central stalk or petiole,
like the water-porringer (hydrocotyle
vulgaris).

The leaves become flowers, and the flowers
fruits, in the lotus, as in other plants.  Goethe,
the poet, made the most interesting observation
upon the flowering plants which has
enriched science since Ray discovered and
Linnaeus demonstrated their sexes.  He
showed the transformation of the leaves into
flowers.  He described how, by successive
transformations, the leaves form the calix,
the calix the corolla, and the corolla the
organs which reproduce the plant.  Botanists
now know how to surprise and view these
processes in many plants, and they are most
easily seen on the wild as compared with
the cultivated strawberries.

The lotus leaves and flowers are supported
upon stalks about a yard long, which rise up
out of the water.  The asperities upon the
stalks resemble those of the Nymphaeaceae,
generally, and especially the Euryalea and
the Victoria.  The orbicular and singular
leaves of the lotus transform themselves into
a flower resembling an enormous tulip, or a
gigantic magnolia flower, the ideal of elegant
cups or vases, a foot in diameter, or three feet
in circumference, of a rosy colour, becoming
very brilliant towards the edges of the
petals.  These rosy leaves of the corolla are
a dozen or fifteen in number, and overlap
each other like tiles upon a roof.  The observer
who should, day by day, watch and witness
the transformations of the lotus leaves into
lotus flowers, would share the pleasure with
which Goethe must have first divined these
beautiful changes.  Their fragrance like their
colour resembles the rose.  When the ancient
Egyptians twined these leaves and flowers
into canopies over their canoes, they must
have formed unrivalled shady bowers, or
matchless gondolas, or strangely and ravishingly
delicious combinations of the bower
and the gondolas.  No wonder the rosy lily
of the Nile struck with admiration the
great observers of thousands of years ago!
The lotus flower rising up out of the lakes
upon which the tropical sunbeams blaze, and
across which the flame breezes blow, is well
fitted to strike and haunt, as it has done in
all ages, the imaginations of the yellow races
of the human family.  Most certainly,
conspiracy never had a more magnificent
symbol!

There are white and yellow, as well as
pink lotus flowers.  They are but a short
time in blow, and close at night.  The
stamens are very numerous, and the pistils are
from fifteen to thirty in number.  Each
pistil becomes, in course of time, a fruit, — a
little black nut like an acorn, without its
cup.  The pistils are borne upon a receptacle,
which is the botanical name for the
base upon which all the parts of the flower
rest.  From fifteen to thirty pistils nestle
upon the fleshy sea-green receptacle of the
lotus.  The form of it has been compared to
the knob of the spout of a watering-can.
The ancients called the fruit, a bean.
Theophrastus has described it exactly, with the
embryon folded upon itself, and the little
leaf which characterises it.  " On breaking a
bean," he says, "a little body is seen folded
upon itself, from which the fruit-leaf grows."
This primordial leaf is the cotyledon which
plays such a grand part in the tables of the
system-makers.

I have sketched the biography of the lotus
from the seed to the seed.  The Egyptians
used to take the bean, and, after enclosing it
in a lump of mud to make it sink, throw it
into the water.  When the temperature of
the season prompted germination, the little
body folded upon itself put forth the leaf and
the root.  The horizontal subaqueous stalks
sent up leaves and sent down roots at each
knot or joint.  As the increasing heat sent a
quickened vitality through the plant, the
round leaves rose above the water.  The
leaves became flowers, and the pistils
transformed themselves into fruits; the fruits
containing the beans, and the beans the
embryons.  Such is the perpetual round of
life in the lotus species, and such it has
been ever since the fiat of the Creator
summoned into existence this marvel of the
vegetal world.

The lotus flourished for the first time in
Paris in eighteen hundred and fifty-two;
and it has sometimes produced its fruits in
the open air in the Botanical Garden of
Montpellier.

I do not know the meaning nor the derivation
of the word lotus.  Many Egyptian
plants are called lotus, and there is a town
which bears the name.  But the plant which
has given its name to this town is a tree,—
the tree whose fruit the confectioners imitate
in their jujubes.  Of the Rhamnus lotus of
Linnaeus Pliny says: " its fruit is so sweet
that it gives its name to the country and the
people where it grows."

I fear I may have indulged in too long an
excursion into the realms of Botany, to suit
the reader who merely wishes to know why
the Indian rebels choose lotus flowers as
symbols of conspiracy.  I am sure I am as
innocent of the knowledge as of the rebellion,
but I will try to help my readers to a guess.

Four-fifths of the human species worship a
god-woman. I confess I have but a limited
interest in the discoveries of antiquarians,
for the best mines of antiquities are not the
ruins of buried cities, but the minds of living
populations.  Four-fifths of the human species
worship a god-woman; and the vestiges of