26 AQUILEGIA CHRYSANTHA. GOLDEN COLUMBINE. 



nation to sec any resemblance to a dove in our species, in which 

 the horns turn outwards. In many of the European and Asiatic 

 forms, however, the horns are short and bend inwards, and there 

 is a sudden thickening at the end of the horn. The ancient 

 artists, as Dr. Prior tells us in his " Popular Names of British 

 Plants," loved to picture doves feeding together in peace around 

 a dish, and if we set one of the dove-colored Old World forms 

 on the ground, with the horns uppermost, it has exactly the 

 appearance of one of these old-time dove dinner-parties. Dar- 

 win, in his notes to the " Botanic Garden," a fanciful old work 

 published seventy years ago, in which plants are endowed with 

 the attributes of animal life, tells us the resemblance is to a nest 

 of young doves, fluttering and elevating their necks as the parent 

 approaches with food for them; but as the dove has but two 

 young at a time, the nest full would be rather slim, and Dr. 

 Prior's explanation is more probable. 



Though there is nothing of the dove in the shape of our 

 species, those w r ho love to trace resemblances to animate nature 

 in these inanimate things will see in it a fair likeness to some 

 other bird, indeed a much closer resemblance than can be traced 

 in the Espiritu Santo, the " dove plant " of the people of Panama. 

 Take, for instance, the central petal on the left-hand flower on 

 our plate. The anthers might represent a spreading, feathery 

 tail; the petal, the back; the two sepals, a pair of wings; and 

 the long nectary, terminating in a point, the neck and small 

 head. 



Some of the poets have dedicated the Columbine to folly; but 

 there is nothing known, either in legend or in history, which 

 couples the name with it, nor is there anything suggestive of 

 Mich a sentiment in the plant itself. In some passages of an 

 old play by Chapman, written about the year 1600, called "All 

 Fools," and referred to by Mr. Ellacombe in the "Garden," there 

 occurs this passage : — 



- What 's that — a Columbine ? 

 No ! that thankless flower grows not in my garden." 



