280 OUR ROCK-GARDEN 



like pendent flowers of the chequered fritillary, as 

 our present plant is often called, is ordinarily of a 

 reddish-purple, very regularly marked, chess-board 

 fashion, with squares of darker purple. The flower 

 may sometimes be found almost entirely without 

 these chequers, being then all purple, or occasionally 

 white. 



The fritillary is so called from the Latin fritillus, 

 a board marked in squares for a game anciently 

 played with dice, while the specific name Meleagris 

 is given to the plant also as a token of its chequer- 

 ing, the guinea-fowl Numidia Meleagris being in 

 some degree thus spotted. Gerard, we see, to- 

 gether with other old herbalists, calls it "the ginny 

 hen flower." " Of the faculties of these pleasant 

 flowres," he tells us, " there is nothing set down 

 in the antient or later writers." This, as one of 

 his main objects was to set forth "the vertues" 

 of each plant, must have been somewhat painful 

 to him to admit, but he cheers up bravely and 

 declares the flower "greatly esteemed for the 

 beautifying of our gardens, and the bosoms of 

 the beautiful." Another old name for the plant 

 is the snake's-head, the chequered bud, before 



From Asia comes the F. armena, another brilliantly yellow 

 blossom, the Old World and the New vying in the produc- 

 tion of interesting forms. There are many other species, 

 one well-known one being the Crown Imperial, so common in 

 cottage gardens. All are bulbous and easy of cultivation. 



