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When I first heard the name I waa struck with its thoroughly 

 English ring ; yet it has not a syllable of English in it. " Staves- 

 acre " is a corruption of its Latin name delphinium staphisagria, and 

 that again is the Latinized corruption of its Greek name ao-raipif 

 mypKn,, a wild raisin. 



For the other instance I will relate to you how I was myself a 

 witness to the manufacture of a name. You know the sweet 

 scented Daphne Mezereon, now in flower in most cottage gardens. 

 When I lived in Derbyshire I was admiring a fine plant of it in a 

 cottage garden, and asked the old woman what she called it, 

 thinking it not at all likely that she would have the botanical 

 name for it, but she was ready with her answer. " We call it the 

 mysterious plant, sir, because its flowers come out before its leaves." 

 It was a curious instance of first corrupting a name from " mezereon" 

 to "mysterious," and then giving a good reason for the corruption, 

 and was a good lesson to me how very little you can trust to 

 similarity of sound in enquiring into the derivation of words. The 

 usual name for the shrub in these parts is the "Paradise plant." 



But I have now, I think, come to the end of my tether, though not 

 by any means to the end of my subject. It is indeed a very large, 

 I might almost say an endless subject. There is not a single 

 English name of a plant, which will not give you some instruction 

 or some pleasant puzzle, or suggest some pretty history, poetry, or 

 legend. But I have tried to confine myself to those plants only 

 with which I should suppose all of you are more or less acquainted, 

 and instead of confining myself, as the title of my paper might 

 perhaps lead you to suppose, to a bare list of the common English 

 names of plants, I have tried to relieve what would then be a 

 very dry and hard business, by telling you something of the 

 poetry and legend which my om'U study among the flowers has 

 brought to my knowledge. I know how Tennyson has spoken of 

 the Baronet's garden, in which 



Flowers of all climes, and lovelier than their names 



Grew side by side. 



But it has been my endeavour this evening to show you that though 



I feel deeply, and would have you feel too, how lovely are all flowers 



as they come fresh from the hands of the great Creator, yet that 



