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Harebell or Blue-bell ? These are the same plants in Scotland, and 

 the name is given to the delicate little blue campanula, which you 

 will find plentifully on your downs, sometimes with the flowers 

 pure white. They are also the same plants in England, but the 

 name is given to the wild hyacinth, and always has been so, at 

 least it was so in Shakespeare's time. 



With fairest flowers 

 While smmner lasts, and I live here, Fidele, 

 I'll sweeten thy sad grave — thou shall not lack 

 The flower that's like thy face, pale primrose, nor 

 The azured harebell, like thy veins. — Cymheline. 



And another old poet says — 



The harebell for her stainless azured hue 



Claims to be worn of none but who are true. — Brown. 



while the old herbalist Gerard calls it the blue harebell or 

 English hyacinth. 



Let me call to your remembrance, one of the prettiest word- 

 pictures in " Walton's Angler," for the sake of one or two old 

 plant-names in it. ''I could sit quietly, and looking on the water see 

 some fishes sport themselves in the silver stream, others leaping at 

 flies of several shapes and colours ; looking on the hills I could 

 behold them spotted with woods and groves ; looking down the 

 meadows I could see here a boy gathering lilies and lady-smocks, 

 and there a girl cropping culverkeys and cowslips." "Lady-smocks" 

 are the same plants that our children now call cuckoo flowers, but 

 "culverkeys" are, and always have been, a puzzle. I know of only 

 . one other author that uses the word, and that is J. Dennys, a 

 poet of no mean powers, quoted by Walton, and whom we may 

 claim as a local poet, for he lived at Pucklechurch, and Bitton, in 

 the latter part of the sixteenth century. In his " Secrets of 

 Angling" (one of the rarest books in the English language, only 

 four or five copies being known to exist), he says — 



So I the fields and meadows green may view, 



And daily by fresh rivers walk at will, 



Among the dasies and the violets blue, 



Red hyacinth and purple daflFodil, 



Purple narcissus like the morning rays. 



Pale gander-grass and azure culver-keys. 



