the belief in astrology, in mythology, or in some extravagant healing virtue which had been ascribed to the plant in question.

When we find the word

Let me take two instances of this confusion. Smilax in an ancient author, we might naturally conceive that it alluded to the common prickly trailer of the Mediterranean region, a well-known species of the Sarsaparilla family, used in the Churches at Cannes for Christmas decoration, a plant very characteristic, with its heart-shaped spotted leaves, its abundant thorns, its wiry stem, its marked climbing habits, and its bunches of berries, like clusters of small red grapes, which hang in the most graceful manner beneath its thick interlaced evergreen foliage. Theophrastus mentions this plant as a tree of the pos kind, but the prinos is identified as the Ilex, or if not the Ilex the dwarf prickly oak, which is very like it-the Quercus coccifera. What likeness is there between the two except that they are evergreen? But Dioscorides and Plutarch make the Smilax synonymous with the unλos or yew; again what resemblance between this large massive forest tree and a delicate climber, except that they both bear berries and are evergreen?

Dioscorides further mentions a vegetable Smilax, dressed and eaten like our French beans, and Theophrastus describes a rough Smilax-Smilax тpaxeta. By this Sprengel conceives is indicated the wild convolvulus-Convolvulus sepium. Euripides and Aristophanes both mention the Smilax. Of which of these plants were they speaking? I leave it to a future Solomon.

Another instance I may give of the disappointment which may meet the searcher into the origin of plant names.

The name Celandine has a charming poetic rhythm. No sonneteer but would wish to enrich his verse with the word celandine. There is no doubt about the derivation of the word; surely it must have something sweet to say anent those golden stars which peep out upon us in early spring from hedge-bank and garden.

The name comes to us through the French chelidoine, from the Greek Xeλowv, a swallow, and it would seem quite a conundrum to find a link between the two-Why is a celandine like a swallow?

The answer is easy. Is it not well known, and have not Pliny and Aristotle carefully observed it, that the young of the swallow, when their eyes are injured, are instantly cured by the mother bird who applies celandine to the wound,

Cacatis pullis hac lumina mater hirundo

(Plinius ut scripsit) quamvis sint eruta, reddit.

And William Coles, also quoted in Prior's book, writes:-"It is known to have such skill of nature; what wonderful care she hath of the smallest creatures, giving to them a knowledge of medicine to help themselves, if haply diseases annoy them. The swallow cureth her dim eyes with celandine, the weasel knoweth well the virtue of herb grace, the dove the verven, the dogge dischargeth his maw with a kind of grasse; it were too long to reckon up all the medicines which the beastes are known to use by nature's directions only."

So much for Celandine; but if such instances prove that much accurate

knowledge is not to be gained by the study of Plant names, still it cannot be

It cannot be disregarded if it is various languages, or the movements Such study may even throw a light

denied that the subject is very fascinating. desired to explore either the ancient roots of of the nations who spoke those languages. on the habits of the nations who carried with them these plant names, and attest the advances made by them in civilization.

Take the birch tree. We have the word substantially the same in all Scandinavian and Tuetonic languages, but in Sanscrit and in Hindi, bircht and birchk are also found; birchk-our own birch, with k added in the language of Northern India. What deductions do we make from these facts? Is it a proof of migration of eastern nations to the west? or of the northern nations reaching in their southward journey the Himalayas? Can we find a clue here as to the migrations of Scythians, Saxons, and other like problems?

Another tree is found in northern languages-Anglo-Saxon, Swedish, German-nearly identical with our own, the hawthorn. "Hay" or "haw" meaning "hedge." It is thus a testimony as to the use of hedges, dating from a very early period, among the Germanic races.

Isaac Taylor, in "Words and Places," points out how very distinctive of the Anglo-Saxon race is the idea of inclosure. England is pre-eminently the land of hedges and inclosures; there are no hedges in France. But in Anglo-Saxon names the suffixes frequently denote an enclosure of some kind, and he instances as such "ton, ham, worth, stoke, stow, fold, park, hay, burg, bury, borrow," remarking that these suffixes prove how intensely the nation was imbued with the principle of the sacred value of property; how eager each man was to possess some spot which he might call his own and guard it from the intrusion of others. The names of plants mentioned in Scripture are an interesting study, and are not entirely without result. We may reasonably suppose that, as regards the vine, the olive, the pomegranate, wheat and barley, we have the correct translation of the Hebrew word, but with many of them there is great difficulty in identifying them.

Take the mention of the ash tree in Isaiah; there is no ash indigenous in Palestine. The Septuagint translates it pine; the rose of Sharon is believed to be the narcissus tazzetta; the lilies answering to the Hebrew Shushan are interpreted to be the tulip; the iris and the water-lily, the lilies of the field of the New Testament being universally claimed as indicating the red anemone, which is so abundant in Palestine, and of such remarkable beauty.

We have the Greek words in the Septuagint version to compare with the Hebrew, but often there is no connection between them. For instance, the Greek Exaca, the olive, bears no resemblance to the Hebrew Zaith, or the Hebrew Tamar, the palm, to the Greek Powię.

But in certain names applying more particlarly to gums and fragrant plants, the names are almost identical in the two languages.

Cinnamon, cummin, hyssop, myrrh, nard, galbanum, are examples.

The word cane may also be mentioned, for, like the word sack, it is nearly identical in Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and English. The word sack, as I have said,

runs through all European language, as if to teach us that a man with a sack to hold what he may gather, and a stick or cane to support his steps and beat off the enemy is fully equipped for whatever may betide.

Turning now to plants derived from the Greek, it will be only possible in a short paper to touch very lightly on one or two well-known plants by way of example.

Aconite is said by Pliny to be derived from ev aкovais, among the rocks, owing to the situation where it is usually found, a very uncertain guide.

As regards Greek myths which cling round the names of such plants as Narcissus and Hyacinthus; in the case of Narcissus, the name of the plant is older than the myth attached to it. It is so called from its soothing properties. Our word narcotic is derived from the same root.

Narcissus' amazement at beholding his beauty in a pellucid pool, and his becoming violently enamoured of himself, and at last dying in the agonies of unrequited love, is described at great length by Ovid. The circumstance that he was changed into a flower occupies but two lines, and it was a yellow flower (croceum) into which he was metamorphosed.

In the story of Hyacinthus the myths vary. It is allowed that either from the blood of Hyacinthus or Ajax a plant sprung with the letters A I visible on its leaves or flowers.

Some declare that Lilium bulbiferum satisfies the conditions. Others claim that the mystic letters may be read on the Gladiolus ramosus, and the epithets applied to Hyacinth, very dark, pale, white, make the difficulty of identification still greater.

Equal difficulty will be found in investigating such names as Helenium, as derived from Helen; Centaurea, from the Centaur; Adonis, Achillea, from Achilles; Poeonia from Poeon; and others; and when we reach names derived from Latin we fail to be satisfied with the result of our investigations. For example, Ranunculus is the diminutive of the Latin word meaning a frog; the ranunculus is, therefore, the little frog, alluding to the aquatic habit of some species; a very unworthy designation for so noble and varied a family.

But plant names of purely Latin origin are comparatively rare.

be useless to detain you by examining further examples.

It will

The nomenclature of cereals is not without instruction. Our wheat, our oats, and our barley came to us from northern nations; the roots of these names being traced to Anglo-Saxon, High German, and Scandinavian dialects.

Wheat is the white grain, as opposed to black barley and oats.

Barley, or Beerleg, is the grain from which beer is made.

Oats is the edible grain, the main food of these early people.

There is interest also in tracing the transformations or corruptions of words, of which, before concluding my paper, I may offer a few examples. Quince-the word is derived from the French coing or coignasse, a quince; but there is an older Provencal word codoing, which shows to us that coing is truly a corruption of the Latin cydonia, a quince, and this, a translation of the Greek Kudovov which offers no description of the characteristics of the plant, but is a name

derived from a city in Crete, Kudovia.

Daffodil and eglantine do not repay exploration. Daffodil owes its origin to the French affrodille, a corruption of asphodel. Eglantine is from the old French aiglant, synonymous with the Latin aculeatus, prickly. Two English plants, treacle mustard and mithridate pepperwort, cannot fail to excite our curiosity, being so strangely labelled. Mithridates, King of Pontus, invented a marvellous concoction as a potent vermifuge and antidote to all animal poison. It was often called Triacle or Theriacum, perhaps because viper's blood was one ingredient, and these two plants are supposed to to have been used in compounding this ancient drug. Apricot is a curious word. We should have been satisfied to find it derived from the Latin apricus. Surely the glowing bloom of the Apricot suggests strongly the idea of sun ripening. Prof. Skeat will not allow us to do this. He points out that the original word was apricock, and this he derives from the Portugese allricoque, but allricoque is traced by Littré to the Arabic al-barquq and then it is found that this latter is a corruption of the late Greek Tраikокlov, the same word as præcoquem, the accusative of praecox early; the apricot being thus described, with the usual want of accuracy, as the early peach, persica prœcox.

The genus Lysimachia (Loosestrife) is a word of which we are able to give a satisfactory explanation. Pliny tells us that it was so named from a certain King Lysimachus, whose power of appeasing strife was no doubt greater than the plant in question.

I have only time to indicate various sources not yet mentioned from which plants have taken their names. Plants named from countries in which they flourished: Arabis, from Arabia; Iberis, from Iberia; Peach, from Persia, and others. Plants owing their names to ecclesiastical legends: St. John's Wort, St. Barbara's Cress, St. Barnaby's Thistle, St. Dabeoc's Heath, and St. Patrick's Cabbage. Plants owing their names to supposed medical virtues, founded in many cases on what is known as the doctrine of signatures, that is, the idea that plants in the form of their leaves or corolla so indicate their natural fitness to cure diseases; a plant with kidney-shaped leaves would be effective in curing diseases of the kidneys. As examples of plants with supposed medical virtues may be named-barrenwort, birthwort, saxifrage, whitlowgrass, sanicle, lungwort, spleenwort, and liverwort; and with a similar notion of curative power, eyebright is said to be used by the linnet to clear its sight. Hawkweed is said by Pliny to perform a similar office for the hawk.

In the above hasty view of the origin of Plant names, it will be seen that most plants were given names in an age when scientific exactness was not possible, when superstitious ideas as to plants were prevalent, when the examinations of distinctive characters were faulty; there would appear, therefore, to be but one means whereby the botanist can assure himself of the name of any given plant, that is, by the Latin specific and generic name which botanists in all countries have agreed to assign to it; that is its name. It has no other. The popular names given to plants in England, in France, in Germany, are interesting, but they are an uncertain guide. In Britten and Holland's English Plant Names, it is stated, that "cuckoo flowers" is applied to at least ten different species,

"cowslip" to eight or nine. "Bachelors' Buttons" to many more. It may tend to popularize the study of plants in England, to endeavour to find English names for species hitherto only known by a Latin equivalent, but it must be at best but a doubtful expedient, and in this age when the traveller on the Continent meets at every step new floral treasures, he will be compelled, in consulting books of reference, to revert to the names made use of by the scientific world, and to adopt that nomenclature which is understood by all nations.

Thanks having been given to the Rev. Sir George Cornewall for his paper, and also to the Vicar, his family, and Curate, the members employed the short interval remaining by a rapid inspection of the town, and after fortifying themselves at various refreshment rooms therein found, assembled at Berkeley Station at 5.15 for the special train to Lydney, where, after being subjected to a series of shrieking, snorting, puffing and blowing proceedings, relieved periodically by sundry stationary halts, found themselves eventually shunted on the Great Western line for a pleasant return journey home along the banks of the Severn to the junction at Grange Court, a picturesque change of scenery to the outward journey.

A list of the members and visitors attending is appended :-Sir Herbert Croft, President; Mr. H. Southall, Vice-President; Mr. Geo. H. Piper, F.G.S., a former President; Revs. J. O. Bevan, W. K. Brodribb, C. Burrough, Sir Geo. H. Cornewall, W. D. V. Duncombe, J. E. Grasett, E. J. Holloway, M. Hopton, A. G. Jones, W. H. Lambert, A. C. Lee, H. North, T. P. Powell, W. R. Shepherd, Hon. Ven. Berkeley L. S. Stanhope, Hon. Rev. W. S. Stanhope, Rev. H. W. Tweed; Capt. de Winton, Capt. Campbell; Messrs. H. G. Apperley, H. C. Beddoe, G. Cresswell, James Davies, Luther Davis, W. J. Grant, J. Lambe, C. J. Lilwall, C. E. Lilley, T. Llanwarne, B. St. J. Attwood Mathews, W. Pilley, A. J. Purchas, H. G. Sugden, Guy Trafford, H. C. Moore, Honorary Secretary, and James B. Pilley, Assistant Secretary.

The following is a list of the visitors :-Ladies-Lady Croft, and the Misses Croft, Mrs. Attwood Mathews and friend, Miss May Barker, Miss Beddoe, Mrs. Burrough, Mrs. Campbell, Miss Carless, Mrs. R. Clarke, Miss Davies, Miss Durrant, Miss Gee, Mrs. Glynn, Mrs. W. J. Grant, Miss Grasett, Mrs. Green, Miss Gwynne James, Mrs. Hopton, Miss Hopton, Miss Johnson, Miss Frederica Jones, Miss Lee, Mrs. Grey, Mrs. Lilwall, Mrs. Pilley, Miss Pilley, Miss Piper, Miss Prosser Powell, Mrs. Purchas, Miss Whinfield; and the following gentlemen :-Rev. E. R. Firmstone, Rev. H. B. Porter, Messrs. H. W. Apperley, Carless, Croft, Douglas Stretch-Dowse, and W. King, with many others whose names were not ascertained.

POSTSCRIPT.

It would have been considered nothing but natural had history revealed to us schemes whereby the murderers of Edward had attempted to throw off suspicion from themselves, but we are not prepared for such startling revelations to be reserved to so late a period of the nineteenth century. The following letter, signed G. G., appeared in The Times of November 4th, 1890, under the heading :