LIFE-HISTORY OF THE HERB ROBERT 91 
they cannot if they have any healthy imagination at 
all, confine their different interests in separate com- 
partments which are watertight and mutually ex- 
clusive. 
There is profound truth in Shelley’s lines : 
‘* Nothing in the world is single; 
All things by a law divine 
In one another’s being mingle,”’ 
and the names of a plant belong in a very winsome 
way to its life-history, for are they not the reflex of 
some of the impressions made by their owner upon 
the human race ? 
It adds immensely to the value and the beauty 
of the mental picture we form of the life of our common 
and well-known plants if we understand a little about 
the origin of their popular names: the scientific 
ones too are not infrequently, although by no means 
always, singularly apt and well chosen. 
We cannot quarrel with the Herb Robert’s, since 
Geranium comes from a Greek word yépavoc, a crane, 
and we shall see presently why it is called Cranes- 
bill.. The meaning of the Robert or Robin is not 
quite so clear: its connection with this plant is some 
six to seven hundred years old. It may be simply 
a corruption of Rob-wort the Red plant, or it may have 
to do with an ancient saint or perhaps with a physician 
of that name who used it in his practice, or else with a 
disease from which a famous sinner Duke Robert of 
Normandy is supposed to have suffered and to have 
been cured by its medicinal properties, more valued 
in olden times than nowadays. 
The bestowal of names, however, is the work of 
man, and we must confine ourselves to the work of 
the plant in response to its surroundings, otherwise 
