pfant Isore, Isege^/, anR Isijric/, 323 



fair. From its broad leaves, the Elecampane is sometimes called 

 the Elf-dock. It is held to be under Mercury. 



ELICHRYSUM. — This species of everlasting^ flower derived 

 its name, accortliiif,^ to Themista^^oras, from the nymj)!! Elichrysa, 

 who having adorned the f^joddess Diana with its blossoms, the 

 plant was called after her, Elichryson. Its old English name was 

 Golden Flower, or Golden Moth-wort, and Gerarde tells us that 

 the blossoms, if cut before they are quite ripe, will remain beautiful 

 a long time after. " For which cause of long lasting the images 

 and carved gods were wont to weare garlands thereof: whereupon 

 some have called it ' God's floure.' For which purpose Ptolemy, 

 King of i^gypt, did most diligently observe them, as Pliny 

 writeth." 



ELM. — The ancients had a tradition that, at the first sound 

 of the plaintive strains which proceeded from the lyre of Orpheus, 

 when he was lamenting the death of Eurydice, there sprang up a 

 forest of Elms; and it was beneath an Elm that the Thracian 

 bard sought repose after his unavailing expedition to the infernal 

 regions to recover his lost love. Rapin thus tells the tale: — 



" When wretched Orpheus left the Stygian coast, 

 Now hopeless since again his spouse was lost, 

 Beneath the preferable shade he sate 

 Of a tall Elm, and mourned his cruel fate : 

 Where Rhodope rears high her steepy brow, 

 While Ileber's gentle current strays below. 

 On his sweet lyre the skilful artist played, 

 Whose all-commanding strings the woods obeyed ; 

 And crowding round him formed a hasty shade. 

 There Cypress, Ilex, Willows, Planes unite, 

 And th' Elm, ambitious of a greater height, 

 Presents before his view a married Vine, 

 Which round her husband, Elm, did circling twine, 

 And warned him to indulge a second llame ; 

 But he neglects th' advice, and slights the dame : 

 By fatal coldness still condemned to prove 

 A victim to the rage of female love." 



The " wedding of the Elm to the Vine," alluded to in the above 

 lines, was a very favourite topic among the old Roman poets; 

 Virgil, indeed, selecfts the juncftion of the Elm and the Vine as the 

 subjecft of one whole book of his ' Georgics.' The ancients twined 

 tlieir Vines round the trunks of the Elm ; and the owner of a \'ine- 



yard tended his Elms as carefully as his Vines. When Achilles 



killed the father of Andromache, he erected in his honour a tomb, 



around which njmphs came and planted Elms. Perhaps on 



account of its longevity, or because it produces no fruit, the 

 Greeks and Romans considered the Elm a funereal tree: in our 

 own times, it is connected with burials, inasmuch as coffins are 



generally made of its wood. The ancients called the Elm, the 



tree of Oneiros, or of Morpheus, the god of sleep. As a widc' 



Y — 3 



