142 FAMILIAR WILD FLOWERS. 



emerging one by one from the deepening twilight. The 

 night-flowering catchfly, the Silene noctiftora of the 

 botanist, a closely-allied plant, is also as its name clearly 

 demonstrates; both in the vulgar tongue and the scientific 

 appellation another of these flowers of the evening. 

 Its blossoms are large and very sweetly scented, but not 

 so purely white as those of the evening campion, being 

 ordinarily reddish in tint. 



The white campion is the Lychnis vespertina of 

 botanical classification. The generic name is derived 

 from the Greek word for a lamp. The name was first 

 applied to the genus by the great Linnaeus. Though one 

 fails at first to see any special connection between the 

 flower and a lamp, and is at the outset inclined to detect 

 some recondite poetical allusion to the silvery gleaming of 

 the blossoms in the dusk of the evening, the explanation of 

 the term is much more prosaic. It is suggested by the 

 fact, that the thick woolly substance that is so marked a 

 peculiarity on the leaves of some of the species has either 

 itself been used as a wick to a lamp, or is at least very 

 similar to the material that some few other plants did 

 render for such a service in olden time. The specific name 

 vespertina is a Latin adjective, meaning that which per- 

 tains to the evening ; another equally common and allied 

 species, the red campion, being the Lychnis diurna, the 

 specific name in this case being also Latin in its origin, 

 and signifying that which belongs to the day. We have 

 never seen any probable derivation given, or even suggested, 

 for the common English name campion ; but as the greater 

 number of these names originated in the Middle Ages, 

 when the monkish Latin influenced so many of the names 

 given, we may, we think, not altogether unreasonably 



