CURIOUS HISTORIES. 167 



new names, each meant to record the gith- 

 like character of its seeds, — one gith-ago^ 

 the other pseudo-melanthion. When Lin- 

 naeus, in the middle of the last century, 

 brought order out of the confusion of the 

 names of animals and plants, he found no 

 less a name for the brilliant cockle than the 

 poetic Agrostemma, " crown of the fields ! " 

 To complete the name he added the popular 

 though historic githago, making the Agros- 

 temma Githago of botanies. The genus 

 Agrostemma is now included in the genus 

 Lychnis, — Lychnis is a Greek word for a 

 light or lamp, — and our plant now carries 

 the less pretentious name, Lychnis Githago. 

 Perhaps the common name, cockle, also re- 

 cords an allusion to the aromatic seeds of 

 the gith. It is pretty clearly derived, though 

 indirectly, perhaps, from the Latin caucalis, 

 a name which was early applied to some 

 caraway-like plant with which the gith was 

 probably associated. The name cockle may 

 have been applied first to the gith and after- 

 wards to the plant we now know as cockle. 

 Old English writers, however, used the word 

 for weeds in general, but no doubt always 

 with a special reference to the wheat-field 

 pest. It is supposed that the word was used 



