366 pPaat bore, bcgeT^/, ari^ "bijrie/. 



For nine long days all sustenance forbears ; 



Her hunger cloy'd with dew, her thirst with tears : 



Nor rose ; but rivets on the god her eyes, 



And ever turns her face to him that flies. 



At length to earth her stupid body cleaves ; 



Her wan complexion turns to bloodless leaves, 



Yet streaked with red : her perished limbs beget 



A flower resembling the pale Violet ; 



Which, with the Sun, though rooted fast, doth move ; 



And, being changed, yet changeth not her love." — Sandys^ Ovid. 



Rapin, in error, alludes to the Sunflower {Helianthus) as owing its 



origin to Clytie. He says : — 



" But see where Clytie, pale with vain desires, 

 Bows her weak neck, and Phoebus still admires ; 

 On rushy stems she lifts herself on high, 

 And courts a glance from his enliv'ning eye." 



The flower into which the hapless Clytie was metamorphosed 

 was not the scented Heliotrope, common to modern gardens, which 

 does not turn with the Sun, and, being of Peruvian origin, was of 

 course unknown to the ancients; neither was it the Helianthus, 

 or Sunflower, for that plant also came to us from the new world, 

 and was therefore equally unknown in the days when Ovid wrote 

 the tragic story of Clytie's love and death. The Herba ClyticB is 

 identified in an old German herbal {Hortus Medicus Camerarii) 

 with Heliotropium Tricoccon. Gerarde figures four Heliotropiums, 

 or "Tornesoles," one of which he names Heliotropmm Tricoccum; 

 and in his remarks on the Heliotrope or Turnsole, he says: "Some 

 think it to be Herba ClyticB into which the poets feign Clytia to be 

 metamorphosed ; whence one writeth these verses : — 



' Herba velut ClitiiB semper petit obvia sol em. 

 Sic pia mens Christum, quo prece spectet, habet.' " 



Parkinson calls the same plant the Turnesole Scorpion Tayle. 

 Theophrastus alludes to the same Heliotropium under the name of 

 Herba Solaris. But we do not find that the flowers of this common 

 European species of Heliotrope answer the description given by 

 Ovid — " A flower most like a Violet" — or by Pliny, who says of it: 

 "The Heliotrope turns with the Sun, in cloudy weather even, so 

 great is its sympathy with that luminary: at night, as though in 

 regret, it closes its blue flowers." The insignificant Heliotropium 

 or Turnsole, with its diminutive whitish blossom, cannot be the 

 flower depid^ed by Ovid, or the plant with " blue flowers" referred 

 to by Pliny. Moreover, Gerarde tells us that the European Turn- 

 sole he figures " is named Heliotropium, not because it is turned 

 about at the daily motion of the sunne, but by reason it flowereth in 

 the Summer solstice, at which time the sunne being farthest gone 

 from the equinocftial circle, returneth to the same." In Mentzel's 

 ^ Index Nominum Plantarum Multilinguis' (1682) we find that the old 

 Italian name of the Turnsole was Verrucaria (Wart- wort), and 

 Gerarde, in the index to his ' Herbal,' states that Verrucaria is 



