Plant Names 289 



view is limited and he learns to know garden flowers 

 and birds and insects thoroughly, when the vast and 

 bewildering variety of field and forest would have 

 remained unappreciated by him. 



It is a distressing condition of the education of 

 farmers, that they know so little about the country. 

 The man knows about his crops, and his wife about 

 the flowers, herbs, and vegetables of her garden ; 

 but no countrymen know the names of wild flowers 

 and few countrywomen, save of medicinal herbs. 

 I asked one farmer the name of a brilliant autumnal 

 flower whose intense purple was then unfamiliar to 

 me the Devil's-bit. He answered, "Them's Woi- 

 lets." Violet is the only word in which the initial V 

 is ever changed to W by native New Englanders. 

 Every pink or crimson flower is a Pink. Spring 

 blossoms are " Mayflowers." A frequent answer is, 

 " Those ain't flowers, they're weeds." They are more 

 knowing as to trees, though shaky about the ever- 

 green trees, having little idea of varieties and inclined 

 to call many Spruce. They know little about the 

 reasons for names of localities, or of any histor- 

 ical traditions save those of the Revolution. One 

 exclaims in despair, " No one in the country knows 

 anything about the country." 



This is no recent indifference and ignorance; Susan 

 Cooper wrote in her Rural Hours in 1848 : 



" When we first made acquaintance with the flowers of 

 the neighborhood we asked grown persons learned per- 

 haps in many matters the common names of plants they 

 must have seen all their lives, and we found they were no 



