HABITS AND LATtN NAMES OF BRITISH PLANTS. 309 



and is elegantly alluded to by Felicia Hemans in her Dial of Flowers, for an 

 extract of which see Baxter's Flowering Plants ; in which is also an account of 

 the delicacy of the structure and elaborate formation of jthis elegant little plant. 

 Small birds are fond of the seeds. Sir J. E. Smith remarks that it is very rarely 

 found of a brilliant white. 



Anagallis tenella, Purple flowered Moneywort, Bog Pimpernel. — It yields to 

 none of our wild plants in elegance, and, being scarcely known on the Continent 

 except in the south, is a welcome present to German, Swiss, and Swedish 

 botanists. In Withering are the following appropriate lines — 



" Of fairer form and brighter hue 

 Than many a flower that drinks the dew 

 Amid the garden's brilliant show." 



Anchusa. — From «y%w, to strangle, on account of its astringent qualities, or 

 from ctyxpvtrx, paint, the roots of one species, A. tinctoria, yielding a red dye 

 formerly used to stain the face, and for other purposes. 



Anchusa sempervirens, Evergreen Alkanet. — This is one of our prettiest native 

 plants, and well deserves a place in the flower garden. Dr. Withering observes 

 that the Alkanet-roots produced in England are very inferior for yielding a fine 

 red colour to those of A. tinctoria grown in the Levant. The cortical parts only 

 give the dye. 



Andromeda. — From the constellation so called ; these plants prevailing in 

 northern latitudes ; or rather, perhaps, from a fanciful allusion to the fate of the 

 princess of that name, whose beauty was doomed to pine on a desolate rock, 

 surrounded by the monsters of the ocean ; as her vegetable prototype hangs its 

 drooping head, suffused with blushes, while possessing in solitude the turfy 

 hillock, in the midst of swamps and loathsome reptiles. 



Andromeda polifolia, Marsh Andromeda. — An elegant evergreen shrub, scarcely 

 a span high, whose rose-coloured drooping flowers are a good deal concealed among 

 the terminal leaves. A very interesting account of this charming plant is given 

 in LinnjEus's Lapland Tour, I., 188. See also Hooker, Scot., 12£. 



Woodside, near Liverpool, 

 Feb. 7, 1838. 



C To be continued. J 



vol. in. — no. xxi. 2 r 



