NEW NAMES AND OLD 201 



to Auriculas sometimes arrest attention. A thrum-eyed 

 flower is one in which the style is short and the stamens 

 are long, protruding and, so to say, thread-like. " Thrum" 

 derives from the Icelandic word thromr, which etymolo- 

 gists connect with the Latin word terminus, an end. It 

 is applied to the fringe of threads remaining on the beam 

 of a loom after the web has been cut away. Any con- 

 nection between an Auricula and a loom seems very 

 remote, but here it is conclusively established. In 

 Chapman's translation of the Iliad we read : " Tapestries 

 all golden-fringed and curled with thrums behind." 

 Our Auriculas, too, are sometimes " golden-fringed," 

 but the thrums are in front. In a " pin-eyed " flower 

 the stamens are short and perhaps hidden in the tube, 

 but the style is so long as to make the stigma which it 

 carries a conspicuous object in the flower. 



We shall certainly not love the old names of flowers, 

 whatever their source, the less for knowing their origin ; 

 but what we learn teaches us that many " old English " 

 names cannot boast an Anglo-Saxon parentage, but 

 come from the despised Latin. 



" Popular " names for flowers are not making active 

 headway, in fact, they have a hard struggle to hold their 

 own. Within the past twenty years a determined at- 

 tempt has been made to establish a new series of popular 

 names, and it has been an almost complete failure. Of 

 many hundreds of names coined to form a " popular " 

 currency only one has established itself, and that very 

 insecurely. I refer to the Tufted Pansy. The name is a 

 good one, but it had to compete with the short and 

 pretty Viola, which everybody loved. Be it noted, too, 

 that Pansy is not of Anglo-Saxon origin ; it comes from 

 the French pensees, thoughts. 



Numerous other coined names are never used, unless 



