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3 
Some czilics may e-mplain that my list inciudes 
many names wnoich are of a generai rather than 
of a locel character. My answer is that in com- 
piling this lit I have tried to serve a double 
purpose—not simply to collect and to preserve 
some of the mo:t interesting of our purely 
Somerset folk-names, but also to assist as far 
as I am able the proverbial “‘ man in the street ”’ 
and the boys and girls in our village schools to 
learn the correct names of many of the flowers 
in which they are interested, but which at present 
are only known to them under som* popular 
name either local or general. As a rule I have 
included in this list only names wWuich have 
acquired a certain local interest through having 
been sent me by correspondents living in the 
district I am attempting to cover, or Which I 
have obtained from local glossaries. I know that 
our larger dictionaries and botanical works con- 
tain many hundreds of popular names of flowers 
which are in more or less general use, and of old 
English names which are now more or less 
obsolete, which would have enormously increased 
the length of my list if lhad thought fit to include 
th m, but broadly speaking I have left al! such 
names alone, except in those cases in which local 
readers have apparently been familiar with—and 
sufficiently interested in—any such name to insert 
it in the lists they have sent me. 
I had several reasons for including a number 
of names from the adjacent parts of Devon, 
Dorset, and Wiits. In the first p'ace I had 
collected some hundreds of names from readers 
living in those border districts, and thought it 
a pity not to make any use of them, especially 
having regard to the fact that some of them 
had never before been published, and in many 
cases they supplement or throw additional light 
upon the names used in Somerset. Further, the 
best and most useful lists of local flower names 
that I could trace as having been published in 
this part of England were the Rev. Hilderic 
Friend’s ‘‘ Devonshire Plant Names ” and those 
given in the “Glossary of Wiltshire Wozds’”’ 
by Mr. G. E. Dartnell and the Rev. E. H. Goddard. 
Both these works have been a great help to me 
in promnne my own list. Mr. Edward Vivian, 
of owbridge, who lives within two or three 
miles of the Somerset border, kindly sent me a 
carefully-compiled list of about 500 names used 
in that district, a large percentage of them being 
in use over a fairly wide area extending well into 
the county of Somerset. Residents in the neigh- 
bourhood of Frome and throughout East Someyset 
generally would probably d that they had 
far more names in common with Mr. Vivian than 
with any list of equal length which might be com- 
piled at, say, Wellington or Dulverton, which, 
although in this county, would have much 
more in common with the names of East Devon. 
