68 FAMILIAR WILL FLOWERS. 



summit. Botanically the plant is either the Scabiosa 

 arvensis or the Knautia arvensis, the second name being 

 selected by some writers to form a new genus, as the plant, 

 in some few and slight respects, which we need not here 

 discuss, differs from the other scabious flowers in structure. 

 The first generic name has reference to the old belief in 

 the efficacy of the plant in cutaneous affections, while the 

 second, bestowed by Linna3us, is in honourable memory 

 of Christian Knaut, a Saxon botanist of considerable 

 eminence, who flourished in the latter half of the 

 seventeenth century, and died in the year 1716. The 

 field scabious (or field Knautia if we desire to be very 

 accurate indeed), seems to possess no great store of familiar 

 names ; the only deviation from the accepted title that we 

 have been able to find is blue-caps, and this cannot be 

 considered a very happy name, as there is nothing cap-like 

 in the form, while in colour it is certainly not blue. 



