THE HENBIT. 83 



grow in rings at the tops of the stalks, and are of very vari- 

 ous sizes, some being but little larger than the calyx from 

 which they spring, while others are three or four times its 

 length, of a bright rosy-red, and more slender and delicate 

 than those of the red dead-nettle. We notice that one old 

 writer speaks of them as " small-hooded gaping blew 

 flowers/' but we have already had frequent occasion to notice 

 in the old herbals that, though their authors could often 

 most pithily describe the leading features of the growth of 

 a plant in a very few words, they are often by no means 

 to be relied on when it becomes a question of tint. 



The name Henbit, according to Prior in his altogether 

 admirable book, " The Popular Names of British Plants," 

 was bestowed on it from some fancied nibbling of its leaves 

 by poultry, and we find the same idea conveyed in the name 

 bestowed on it by the Germans, Flemings, and others, 

 and in the Old-Latin name for the plant, Morsns-gallina, 

 The generic name Laminm is derived from the Greek word 

 for throat, and refers to the long tubular corollas of this 

 and the allied plants ; by some of the earlier botanists it 

 was called Alsine. We find it under this name, for instance, 

 in the herbals of Gerarde and Parkinson. The word signifies 

 growing in groves, and has been bestowed upon several 

 very different plants, though perhaps on none less appro- 

 priately than on the Henbit. These early writers, too, 

 associated the plant, for some extraordinary reason, with the 

 chickweed, though there may possibly be some association 

 or line of ideas now lost to us that in some way unites 

 the plant bitten of hens and the weed of the chicks. 

 However this may be, the plant in old herbals rejoices 

 in the far-stretching title of the great ground-ivy-leaved 

 chickweed. The shape of the leaves and their growth 



