286 WILD FLOWERS. 



name by which old writers, in common with the 

 peasantry of the present day, know the erythrcea. It 

 is greatly to be regretted that an appellation tend- 

 ing to cause so much confusion should be retained. 

 In the plants of which we are speaking the confu- 

 sion of names is increased by the circumstances of 

 their supposed origin. Chiron, who is appositely 

 fabled to be the son of Saturn, or emblematically 

 of time and experience, is said to have been one of 

 the founders of the science of medicine, with its 

 attendants, botany and surgery. Hence the name 

 of chironia, so long given to the erythrcea, and 

 which is still retained by a genus recently separated 

 from the family; while the English name centaury 

 (erythrcea) and the botanical centdurea (knapweed) 

 refer to the same person under his mythological 

 form of a centaur. Both the names, centdurea and 

 chironia, were attached by the ancients to some one 

 plant, by means of which Chiron cured himself of 

 the wound inflicted by a poisoned arrow from the 

 bow of his pupil Hercules. Such perplexities are 

 unnecessary; and as I am not amongst those 



" Who alliums call their onions and their leeks,* 



I would fain see them, and whatever else can tend 

 to impart an air of intricacy or difficulty to the 

 study of Nature's works, done away with. 



All the gentiandcece, as is elsewhere observed,-)- are 

 exceedingly bitter, possessing valuable tonic quali- 

 ties : and this is the case, to a remarkable degree, 

 in the genus erythr&a. Lewis, Dr. Cullen, and Dr. 



* Crabbe. t See " Gentian." 



