32 THE MUSIC OF WILD FLOWERS 



" columbells," and the lily of the valley is " the great 

 parke lyllye." The very rare blue pimpernel is called 

 the " faemayll pympernell " (Female Pimpernel) to dis- 

 tinguish it from the common red species. I once found 

 this lovely little plant beneath a pear-tree in John Ray's 

 old garden at Black Notley in Essex, and I notice that 

 he calls it " the blew-flower'd or Female Pimpernel " in 

 his classical Synopsis of British plants. It is strange 

 to find beneath a beautiful woodcut of the snowdrop 

 the words " the wyld whit violet." The choice, sweet- 

 scented Daphne mezereum is named the " wyld laurell," 

 and the butcher's-broom the " reed laurell." Very 

 few species of British ferns are mentioned by Fuchs, but 

 there are fine engravings of the adder's-tongue and the 

 moonwort ; and it is interesting to notice that our un- 

 known English botanist calls the one " serpent-tonge " 

 (serpent 's-tongue), and the other " lunary the less." 

 The cowslip he calls a " pagle," a name by which the 

 plant is still known in the eastern counties. The purple 

 colchicum or meadow-saffron he names " the wyld 

 purple lillye " ; and the rare martagon lily, a fine clump 

 of which I found in a Hampshire wood last summer, is 

 " the purple daffodyll." The different species of orchis 

 were hardly discriminated in the sixteenth century, and 

 many strange names were in popular use. Indeed, as 

 one old herbalist says, the order " has almost as many 

 several names attributed to the several sorts of it as 

 would fill a sheet of paper, too tedious to reherse." It 

 is interesting to notice that our botanist calls them 

 " fox cods," a name rarely met with in English herbals. 

 He thus distinguishes " great fox cods," " small fox 

 cods," " great foemayll (female) fox cods," " triple fox 

 cods," both " mayll " and " foemayll." 



