the decrepit-looking animal from being made fun
of, as in the nursery rhyme—"A puddy would
a wooing go."

In the names of plants, the name of an animal
joined to the word foot, snout, tongue, bill, eye,
or tail, generally points to a real or supposed
resemblance; and the term bane means a bad,
while the term wort implies a good, quality. But
the bad and good qualities, like the likenesses,
have often only an imaginary existence; for flea-
bane does not destroy fleas, and swallow-wort
cannot restore the sight of swallows. Svale is
the Danish word for eaves, the penthouse, or
lean-to, surrounding farm-houses; the swallow is,
therefore, the eavesbird, from svale and wi, the
Sanscrit root of the Latin avis, a bird. Many
plants have been called swallow-worts from their
blossoming about the time of the arrival of the
swallows, but the swallow-wort proper is
Cheledonium majus, with which, according to Aristotle
and Dioscorides, the swallows can restore the
eyes of their young ones, even after they have
been put out!

Superstitions, resemblances, qualities, and
coincidences having their share in the names of
plants, of course the passions must mingle in
the work, and especially the greatest of them all,
Love. Artemis, one of the names of Diana, gives
its classical name to Artemisia abrotanum, a
plant which is called southernwood, because it
comes from the south; Old man, from its hoary
appearance and tonic qualities; and Boy or
lad's love, from its being worn in posies by
young men, and perhaps because its leaves wither
rapidly. Viola tricolor rivals the ground-ivy
in the number of its quaint names and curious
sobriquets. In French it is called pensées,
mênues pensées, whence the English names
pansy or paunce, idle thoughts. Combining
three colours in one flower, it is called Herb
Trinity, and "Three faces under one hood."
Hanging its head and half hiding its face
coquettishly, and from some resemblances in the
corolla, it has been supposed to say, "Jump up
and kiss me;" "Kiss me at the garden-gate;"
"Cuddle me to you." It has, besides, other
amatory names, such as "Love in idleness;"
"Tittle my fancy;" "Pink of my John." Viola
tricolor is also called heart's-ease, from being
confounded with plants yielding seeds of cardiac
qualities. Much confusion has arisen from the
vague and fluctuating use of the French names
Giroflée, Oeillet, and Violette. They were once
all three applied to flowers of the pink tribe,
but now Giroflée has passed over to the Crucifers
and become gilliflower (Dianthus
caryophyllus); Oeillet has been restricted to the Sweet
William; and Violette has been appropriated to
the genus to which the pansy belongs. English
young ladies sometimes send pansies in their
letters to their lovers, when suffering from
absence or parental rebuffs. I have known
botanists learned in structural and systematic
plant-lore, who did not understand the amorous
challenge conveyed to them by post in the
modest form of a few pansies enclosed in an
envelope.

Sedum telephium is called Livelong or Liblong,
and Midsummer men, in reference to a use
made of it on Midsummer's-eve. A young girl
will set up two plants of it upon a plate or
trencher, one for herself, and another for her
lover. If the botanical representative of her
lover lives and turns to her, she concludes that
her lover will be faithful and constant, and the
contrary if it withers or turns from her plant—a
mode of divining the future which is founded on
ignorance of the fact that the growth of plants
is towards the light.

The forget-me-not is a name which has, like
the pansy, been applied to a variety of plants.
For more than two hundred years it was given
in England, France, and the Netherlands, to the
ground pine, Ajugà chamæpitys. From the middle
of the fifteenth century until 1821, this plant was
in all the botanical books called forget-me-not,
on account of the nauseous taste which it leaves
in the mouth. Some of the old German botanists
gave the name Vergiss mein nicht to the
Chamædrys vera fœmina, or Teucrium botrys.
Forglemn mig icke, the corresponding Danish name,
was given to the Veronica chamœdrys. This plant
was in English called the "speedwell," from its
blossoms falling off and flying away, and "speed-
well" being an old form of leave-taking,
equivalent to "farewell" or "good-by." The ancient
English name of the Mysotis palustris was
mouse-ear-scorpion-grass; the phrase mouse-ear
describing the small oval leaves, and the epithet
scorpion the curve of the one-sided racime, like
the scorpion's tail. In the days of chivalry, a
plant which has not been ascertained, was called
"Souveigne vous de moy," and woven into collars.
In 1465 one of these collars was the prize of a
famous joust, fought between a French and an
English knight. Certain German botanists, as
far back as the sixteenth century, seem, however,
to have given the name forget-me-not to the
Mysotis palustris; and borne on the wings of
the poetic legend of a lover losing his life while
gathering a pretty river-side flower for his
sweetheart, and throwing it to her, crying, "Forget
me not!" with his last drowning breath, this
name is now inseparably connected with the
flower; and certainly, the lovers are more
pleasantly associated with it than the mouse's ear
and the scorpion's tail.

Galium aparine is called Loveman because it
catches hold of people. It is perhaps of Climatis
vitalba that Parkinson says, "the gentlewomen
call it Love, from its habit of embracing." Nigella
damascena, or fennel flower, whose flower is
enveloped in a dense entanglement of finely divided
bracts, is called "Love in a Mist," or Love in a
Puzzle. This flower might be used as an emblem
of a different phase of the course of true love
from those indicated by the pansy and the forget-
me-not. Love lies bleeding (Amaranthus
caudatus) has a flower spike resembling a stream of
blood, but the name has outlived its legend.