118 ROYAL OAK DAY 



body was held to indicate their power of healing such 

 organs, produced some very ugly names. English 

 names, as a rule, are preferable to scientific ones, but 

 it is prettier to speak of the pretty spring flower as 

 Hepatica than to translate the term into our English 

 liverwort, both names arising from a fancied re- 

 semblance of its leaves to the human liver; and 

 Pidinonaria is a nicer word than lungwort, con- 

 ferred on a well-known borage -wort, because the 

 leaves reminded curious persons of the human lung. 



Yet there is an aroma about these old-world names 

 which is lost in the pedantic precision of Latin 

 classification, though it is not everybody who thinks 

 so. Not long ago an enthusiast was showing a 

 sympathetic, but inexpert, friend the glories of his 

 rock garden, and drew his attention to the trailing 

 sprays of a pretty creeper. 'It is very like Creeping 

 Jenny/ quoth the visitor. 'It is Creeping Jenny,' 

 confessed the proprietor, 'but we don't call it so in 

 botany. It is Lysimacliia nummularia aurea.' 



XLVI 



Board schools are too apt to replace ignorance with 



mere knowingness, instead of with knowledge, but some 



Royal oak f ur old rural traditions possess a vitality 



Day which, thus far, has enabled them to resist 



their influence. One of these is the observance of 



Royal Oak Day : one may yet see the oak-spray worn 



in the caps of ploughboys in many parts of England. 



In the Thames valley the custom, if not universal, is 



