OLD ENGLISH FLOWER-NAMES 145 



fleabane, are thoroughly good names, and so is 

 tutsan, that is, tout-sain, the countryman's name 

 for St. John's wort; for, as good Gerarde saith, 

 ' the leves, floures, and seeds stamped and put in a 

 glasse with oile olive, and set in the sunne for 

 certain weekes, doth make an oile of the colour of 

 blood, which is a most pretious remedy for deep 

 wounds, and those that are thorow the body.' 

 All-heal, or wound -wort, however, is another 

 plant Stachys palustris useful for staunching 

 bleeding. 



But the doctrine of signatures, whereby the 

 fancied resemblance of parts of plants to organs of 

 the human body was held to indicate their power of 

 healing such organs, produced some very ugly names. 

 English names, as a rule, are preferable to scien- 

 tific 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 resemblance of its leaves to the 

 human liver ; and Pulmonaria is a nicer word than 

 lungwort, conferred 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 

 X 



