THE POPPY. 391 



I must, however, enter a protest against his infe- 

 rence, when, in connection with this fact of their 

 primeval burial in those knolls, he goes on to say; 

 " there is a far distant antiquity even in one of its 

 provincial names. In the neighbourhood of Gorden 

 I heard this weed called Cockeno evidently from 

 Coch, the Celtic for red/' Antique indeed, and 

 Celtic too, this name must be, like the French 

 Coquelicot; yet the staunchest Celtic philologer will 

 scarcely indulge in the idea that his tongue afforded 

 names to the wild flowers of Britain in the "pri- 

 meval "* days of the glacial period, when the frozen 

 ocean launched its mighty boulders into the very 

 heart of our land. Had the knolls been sepulchral 

 tumuli we might have admitted the connection. 



The scarlet-poppy is one of the plants included 

 in the discoveries of Sir John Herschell with regard 

 to that branch of photography called anthotype, 

 which, by a simple process, enables us to photograph 

 certain flowers in their own juices, preserving their 

 natural colours. A piece of paper being evenly 

 coated with the expressed juice of the poppy, vio- 

 let, stock, rose, young cereals, &c., and exposed to 

 light, will quickly lose the tint it had received ; and 

 the same thing occurs to a watery or alcoholic in- 

 fusion of the plant. If, however, the paper be sub- 

 mitted to the action of light, with a carefully spread 

 flower or other object upon it, the surrounding parts 

 only will blanch, and a perfect coloured representa- 

 tion of the object will remain. This blanching is 

 to be traced to the demonstrated fact that the vital 

 * The word is that of Dr. G. Johnston himself. 



