l82 LONICERA SEMPERVIRENS. SCARLET HONEYSUCKLE. 



Nearly all our own poets, when they refer at all to the Wood- 

 bine or Honeysuckle, keep this embowering character especially 

 in view. Bryant, in the " Unknown Way," asks of the strange 

 path — 



" Goest thou by nestling cottage ? 

 Goest thou by stately hall, 

 Where the broad elm droops, a leafy dome, 

 And woodbines flaunt on the wall ? " 



and, in the " Evangeline " of Longfellow, we are told that^ — 



" Firmly builded with rafters of oak, the house of the farmer 

 Stood on the side of a hill commanding the sea; and a shady 

 Sycamore grew by the door, with a woodbine wreathing around it." 



It must be confessed, however, that our poets have either had 

 their im.aginations influenced by European literature or by Euro- 

 pean experiences, for our native species have not the rampant 

 habit of the European, and most of the honeysuckles and wood- 

 bines of American horticulture, which help us to make umbrageous 

 bowers, come to us from China or Japan ; and when we see the 

 woodbine on the American " nesding cottage," we have litde but 

 the name to connect them with the plants of which the poets 

 sing. But the names carry us back a long way into history. 

 By the ancient Greeks and Romans, as we learn from Pliny, the 

 Honeysuckle was known as the Periclymenon. Literally, this is 

 " rolling or twining around," and is equivalent to the modern 

 Woodbine. Honeysuckle seems a puzzling word to modern in- 

 vestigators. Dr. Prior says, in his " Popular Names of British 

 Plants," that the name probably belonged to some other plant, 

 and was "transferred to the woodbine on account of the honey- 

 dew so plentifully deposited on its leaves." But the account 

 given by Green, the old English herbalist, seems to offer a better 

 reason. He says : " In the evenings some species of sphinges, or 

 hawk-moths, are frequendy observed to hover over the blossoms, 

 and with their long tongues to extract the honey from the very 

 bottom of the flowers. A considerable quantity of the nectareous 

 juice may sometimes be discerned in the tube. Insects that are 



