16 MR HARDY ON BUTTERCUPS AND DAISIES. 



{Bellis perenni8)y to which, in the northern part of the island, the name 

 is almost universally appropriated, it is not so easy to ascertain. Per- 

 haps the correspondence of form was the medium of connection. Every 

 where in the fields, associated with the corn-marigold, or goulans {Chry- 

 santhemum, segetumjt the corn-feverfew (C. inodorum) the great ox-eye 

 (C Leucanthemum)^ and the corn-chamomile (Anthemis arvensis), have 

 been, in Berwickshire, denominated horse-gowans, and in Northumber- 

 land white-gowlons, in the same manner as some naturalists, *' taking no 

 note" of colour, have united three of those plants under a general term 

 of Chrysanthemum. As these, in the common parlance of the north 

 of England, are termed " big daisies," so from considerations of supe- 

 riority of size, and similarity of form, they may have given occasion to 

 the imposing of their own name upon the smaller plant, Bellis jperennis, 

 which in so many aspects may be regarded as their miniature. Ob- 

 vious external appearances, often seized on at random, and not particu- 

 larly examined, form the leading features of popular generalization. 

 Sometimes one class of attributes will be fixed upon as characteristic, 

 and as suitable to be distinguished by a general name ; but before the 

 chain of comparison, which this process supposes, has been completed, 

 some other prominent property of verisimilitude obtrudes itself, misleads 

 the mind from the primary elements of its consideration, and, in the 

 confusion which ensues, becomes comprehended under a common term, 

 to which it has no natural claim. Of this the application of the word 

 buttercup is an instance.. Regarded as a general term, it is not re- 

 stricted to plants of a yellow hue, but, all notions of colour being ab- 

 stracted, and those of identity of form alone kept in view, it is given, 

 by the common people, to Parnassia palustris, which is considered as the 

 white buttercup. But the instances wherein, " for the convenience of 

 language or dispatch,'"* from application after the original meaning of a 

 term has been forgotten, or from other '* accidents of time and chance," 

 words have lost their original meaning, are too obvious to be insisted 

 on. Words, regarded originally as the representatives of the varied 

 ideas present to the mind of him who imposed them, their origin being 

 veiled in obscurity, become used only after the manner of coins, which, 

 from the series of years that have elapsed since their invention, no 

 longer recall the quantity of stock, or weight of rude metal, of which 

 they were primarily the conventional symbols. And the analogy is 

 still further retained in the purposes to which, in the necessities of so- 



to make thyr here yelow with the floure of this herbe;not beyng content with 

 the natural colour which God hath geven them.'' 



