14 FAMILIAR WILD FLOWERS. 



time that the little goslings little masses of grey and 

 yellow down are running amidst its flowers and foliage, 

 and the similarity of colour may have struck some early 

 observer. The difficulty of explaining the meaning of 

 the name is only intensified, not removed, when we find 

 some of the early herbalists calling it the goosewort. 

 Another common name for it is the prince's feather, a 

 by no means bad name, as the long pinnate leaves have 

 a curve in the central axis, and a drooping of the ends of 

 the individual leaflets that is very suggestive of the 

 ostrich feathers that form the crest of the Prince of Wales, 

 and the grey effect of the leaves, so different in appearance 

 from the ordinary shades of green met with in the foliage 

 of most plants, adds to the resemblance. The meaning of 

 the word pinnate, applied botanically to leaves of this 

 form, a central line with lateral leaflets given off on either 

 hand, is simply feathery the Latin word pinna, a feather, 

 supplying the root of the word. Though the name, so 

 far as we are aware, is never used now, it is in old books 

 called the trailing tansy, from a certain degree of like- 

 ness, very slight however, which it bears to the tansy. 

 The plant is very abundant in Britain, and indeed 

 throughout the temperate regions of the world, extending 

 from Lapland to the Azores, and being equally at home 

 in regions so remote from ourselves and from each other 

 as Armenia, China, New Zealand, and Chili. All soils 

 appear equally congenial to its growth. Like the peri- 

 winkle, the subject of another plate, the silverweed spreads 

 rapidly by means of its long creeping runners, and is, 

 therefore, when found at all, met with in profusion. The 

 leaves are what is botanically termed interruptedly pinnate, 

 that is to say, there is not a steady increase of size in the 



