72 OUR ROCK-GARDEN 



From a remote antiquity the wood anemone 

 has had wonderful healing powers ascribed to 

 it. Even so early a writer as Pliny, compiling 

 his "Historia Mundi" in the first century of the 

 Christian era, tells us of wise men of old who 

 bade their disciples gather the first flower they 

 saw each Spring, repeating on doing so the for- 

 mula, " I gather thee as a remedy against all 

 disease." This blossom was then reverently placed 

 in a fold of scarlet cloth, to be left undisturbed, 

 unless by evil fate the gatherer fell ill, when it 

 was to be tied round his neck. The assumption 

 was that he would there and then amend. 



Yet another anemone is figured on Plate V., the 

 plant that our gardeners ordinarily call the 

 hepatica, in the same way that another well-known 

 plant is popularly called the japonica. Both these 

 names, however, are but the specific titles. The 

 one plant is the Anemone Hepatica and the other 

 the Pyrus japonica. The plant that we may for 

 convenience' sake call the hepatica is not one of our 

 British anemones, though it is common enough 

 in Switzerland amongst the Spring wild flowers 

 there. As we have already emphasised that one 

 feature of an anemone plant is the ring of three 

 leaves upon its stem, our readers may perchance 

 feel that our illustration scarcely bears this out, 

 but in this species this involucral ring is so 

 close to the flower that it resembles a three- 



