CRITICAL NOTICES OF NEW PUBLICATIONS, 505 
names of flowers, are enough to frighten one from opening books on 
botany or gardening.” 
“J fear me many young people are of your mind, Agnes; but 
though there may seem some reason in your objections to ‘hard 
names,’ as you term them, I think much of the complaint is founded 
in your own inattention and carelessness. In the first place, you 
must remember that the thousands of plants with which our beauti- 
ful world is adorned, have required no small ingenuity and research 
from their botanical sponsors to find names for them, and every new 
vegetable discovery increases the difficulty. Descriptive names can- 
not always be adopted, or, if they were, the necessity for clearly dis- 
tinguishing such species as very nearly resembled each other, would 
soon turn a list of flowers into a dictionary of definitions, and, I need 
not tell you, become tenfold more puzzling than the most terrible po- 
lysyllable extant. Again, very many, indeed nearly all, the names of 
genera are strictly descriptive, though, being derived from Greek and 
Latin words, you will not perceive their appropriateness without a 
translation.” —( Page 2.) 
But the lovely flower which suggests this little discussion is soon 
reverted to. The little pupil enquires if it is one of our native 
plants, or one which has been brought to England. 
“The Snowdrop,” replied Aunt Lucy, “must assuredly take the 
lead in our chronicle of English wild-flowers now, although I am 
much inclined to think it is not absolutely a native of the soil, from 
the fact that the old poets do not in any way allude to it, but speak 
of the primrose as the first flower of spring. The dramatists Beaw- 
mont and Fletcher say— 
‘ Primrose, first-born child of Ver, 
Merry spring-time’s harbinger, 
With her bells dim.’ 
Shakspeare has no Snowdrop in his delicate groups of flowers, though 
he speaks of ‘ Daffodils 
‘That come before the Swallow dares, and take 
The winds of March with beauty.’ 
Ben Jonson, another of the grand old dramatists, who loved to talk 
of flowers as well as we do, and did it with such grace and eloquence 
that he seems to paint what he describes, calls the Primrose the 
‘ spring’s own spouse ;’ but says not a word about our chaste little 
darling here: and all this is to me very conclusive evidence that 
enowdrops are a later acquisition to our woods and meadows. ‘That 
excellent botanist, Mr. Sowerby, from whose delightful books I have 
learned so much, considers it indigenous, from its being found far 
from uncultivated ground; and it may be so, but I generally meet 
with it in places where it is probable that gardens have been.”—p. 4. 
VOL, IX., NO. XXVII. 64 
