156 FAMILIAR WILD FLOWERS. 



smoke ; in many parts of the country the plant is called 

 colloquially earth-smoke ; and in France it is the ftime- 

 de-terre, and in Germany the Erdranch, names of like 

 significance. The English word fumitory follows the same 

 idea; it may more readily be detected in its older guise j 

 the fumiterrie. When, however, we would seek the com- 

 mon idea involved in the various names we have given, our 

 difficulties commence. In the " Ortus Sanitatis," published 

 in the year 1485, we find a belief that the plant was pro- 

 duced from the vapour rising from the earth, that it was 

 not propagated by seeds, as other plants, but was a veritable 

 child of the mist. Pliny, who recommends the use of 

 the plant as an eye-wash, tells us that on its first application 

 to the eyes it causes them to smart and water as smoke 

 does. Another writer tells us that the plant is called the 

 fumitory from its smoke-like stem ; while others, again, 

 point to the tender spreading mass of grey-green leaves, 

 and ask us to see in them a similitude to a whiff of passing 

 vapour on the earth a fumiterrie, or earth-born cloud. 

 All ends, alas ! as it began, in smoke and misty ambiguity. 



