116 CARYOPHYLLE^ 



Our beautiful Corn-cockle is too conspicuous a flower to escape notice, and 

 well deserves its name of Crown of the Field, though this was at first applied 

 to the German species of our gardens, A. coronaria. Ready as the lover of 

 flowers is to admire the Corn-cockle, it cannot be pleasing to the agricul- 

 turist, who well knows that its seeds, which contain the noxious principle of 

 saponine, may greatly injure his corn, and fill his flour with black specks. 

 The capsule, when ripened, is full of large, black, glossy seeds, from which 

 the plant obtained its specific name ; the black aromatic seeds of some plant 

 known to the Romans having been called Git, or Gifh. Gith is an old Celtic 

 word, and the word Oath is said by Sir William Hooker to signify a seed 

 of corn in modern Gaelic. The French call this flower La Nielle ; the 

 Germans, Der Puiden. It is the Koornvlam of the Dutch farmer, and the 

 Agrostemma of the Portuguese. 



The reader of Scripture, as he sees these purple flowers amongst the 

 corn, is reminded of the denunciation of Job, " Let thistles grow instead 

 of wheat, and Cockle instead of barley ;" but the word rendered " Cockle " 

 by our translators does not appear to refer to this plant. From one of our 

 old nursery songs, in which a neglected garden is said to be 



" E'uU of weed.s and Cockle seeds," 



we are inclined to infer that the English word " Cockle " had in earlier times 

 a wider meaning than it has now. But whether our translators, by the word 

 "Cockle," did or did not intend this species of plant, it is now well known 

 that Job could not have referred to it, as it is not a weed of Palestine or 

 Ara])ia. All recent writers agree that some useless, if not noxious, common 

 weed was intended by the Patriarch ; and many have suggested that it was 

 a bramble or other thorny plant, or that the word meant weeds in general. 

 Dr. Royle infers as probable, that it is a species of nightshade (Solanum), 

 common in cultivated grounds, not only in Europe, but in Syria and Arabia. 

 The same Hebrew word is in Isaiah rendered by " wild grape " ; and the 

 Arabs call the nightshade by a name signifying wolf's-grape or ox's-grape. 



6. Pearlwort (Sagina). 



1. Procumbent Pearlwort {S. procmibens). — Stems prostrate, smooth; 

 leaves pointed ; petals much shorter than the calyx ; capsule curved down- 

 wards before ripening. Plant perennial. This little plant, growing in small 

 tufts, is among the most minute of our wild flowers. When we look at its 

 tiny blossoms, and contrast them in imagination with some of the giants 

 of the Vegetable Kingdom, we can but wonder at the remembrance, that the 

 little Pearlwort is as perfect in its structure as those large flowers of which 

 travellers tell us. We read of the Monster Cactus, which reached Kew 

 Gardens in 1846, and required eight strong mules to draw it over the 

 mountains of Mexico, and ten men to place it in the scales at the gardens ; 

 of other species, thirty or forty feet high, forming a chevaux de frise to the 

 plantation, and covered with rose-like flowers ; of the blossoms of Aristoldchia 

 cm'difolia, which Baron Humboldt saw the children place on their heads for 

 caps ; of the Victoria regia, with its leaves six feet in diameter ; of the strange 

 liafflesia arnoldi, whose immense flowers measured a yard across, and Avhose 



