30 . THE FLOWER GARDEN. 



living characters or dead languages. It is hard 

 work, as even Miss Mitford has found it, to make 

 the maurandias, and alstrsemerias, and eschscholtzias 

 the commonest flowers of our modern gardens 

 look passable even in prose. They are sad dead 

 letters in the glowing description of a bright scene 

 in June. But what are these to the pollopostemono- 

 petalas and eleutheromacrostemones of Wachendorf, 

 with such daily additions as the native name of 

 iztactepotzacuxochitl icohueyo, or the more classical 

 ponderosity of Erisymum PerofFskyanum ? 



" like the verbum Grsecum 

 Spermagoraiolekitholakanopolides, 

 Words that should only be said upon holidays, 

 When one has nothing else to do." 



As to poetry attempting to immortalize a modern 

 bouquet, it is utterly hopeless ; and if our cultivators 

 expect to have their new varieties handed down to 

 posterity, they must return to such musical sounds 

 as buglosse, and eglantine, and primrose, before bards 

 will adopt their pets into immortal song. We per- 

 ceive some attempt made lately in Paxton's Maga- 

 zine and the better gardening journals to render the 

 names somewhat more intelligible by Englishing the 

 specific titles, as Passiflora Middletoniana Mid- 

 dleton's Passion-ilower, and the like ; but this is not 

 enough : the combination of a little observation and 

 taste would soon coin such names as " our plainer 

 sires " gave in " larkspur," and " honeysuckle," and 

 " bindweed," or even in " ladies'-smocks," and 

 "ragged-robin," and "love-lies-bleeding." 



