488 HISTORY OF THE HOUSELEEK. [July , 



always living, — but rather semper viridis or sempervirens, always 

 green, evergreen. Sempervivum and Aizoon are both expressive 

 and popular names, not indeed among us or among the Teu- 

 tonic races, the great Germanic family, but among the Greeks 

 and the Latins, where they originated, and to whom they ex- 

 plicitly declared one of the prominent properties of the plant, 

 its ever-during vitality. 



This name Linnseus selected for the genus, and the Latin 

 tectorum, ' of the roofs,' — the equivalent of eiri tcov olkcov of Hip- 

 pocrates, — he gave as its specific or trivial name. 



Our ancestors of the ancient Gothic stock appear to have 

 formed a name for this on similar principles, viz. from acci- 

 dental or specific qualities of the plant, or from some supersti- 

 tious virtue which they supposed to be resident in it. In the 

 Westphalian Glossary, a MS. originally composed or written or 

 copied from a hoch-deutsch (High German) original at a very 

 early period in the Middle Ages, and published by F. J. Mone 

 in his ' Quellen und Forschungen zur Geschichte der teutschen 

 Litteratur und Sprache,' we find Houseleek is Husloeck. Its or- 

 thography varies, for in the same copy Huesloek and Husloch both 

 appear. 



In the Meder Maas Glossary, published in the same collec- 

 tion, we read Hiis-loech. In modern Danish the name of House- 

 leek is Hus-log ; Log, in Danish, is Leek in English. In this 

 compound word Houseleek there are two characters of the plant 

 expressed, an accidental and a specific character. As the scientific 

 generic term Sempervivum adopted by Linnseus expresses the 

 nature of the plant, viz. its being perennial or everlasting or 

 everliving, and as the specific name tectorum signifies an acci- 

 dental character, viz. its locality on roofs, so the term leek ex- 

 presses an essential quality of the plant, viz. its being evergreen, 

 while house implies, like tectorum, its usual habitat or place of 

 growth. The Houseleek is known in Germany by the German 

 equivalent Hauslauch, and it has in that country the names 

 Hauswurz and HauslavJ), or Housev)ort and Houseleaf. In the 

 Swedish it is Tag-lok, or Roof-leek ; tag is an exact translation 

 of tectorum. In Anglo-Saxon the name is Ham-wyrt, Home- or 

 House-wort. 



There is no difiiculty in the application of the term leek to 

 this species. In the first place it is an evergreen, as Leeks are ; 



