100 FAMILIAR WILD FLOWERS. 



other Solomon, with crown and royal robes and sceptre, 

 bearing in his hands a book. Adam is claimed by the 

 mediaeval herbalists as not only a tiller of the ground but 

 a student of botanical science, while Solomon, we all 

 remember, wrote a treatise that dealt with plants, from 

 the lordly cedar to the lowly hyssop of the wall. Above 

 Adam, in a pot, is a TurkVcap lily, and by his side is the 

 fritillary, while Solomon has associated with him the 

 cyclamen and the crown imperial. 



The name Fritillaria is from the Latin fritillus, a dice- 

 box, the chequered arrangement of the colours of the 

 flower suggesting the board used in an old game. "It 

 was called of the Greekes and Latines Flos meleagris, as 

 a difference from a kinde of birde called also Meleagris, 

 whose feathers be speckled lyke unto these floures, but not 

 with violet speckes, but with white and blacke spots, lyke 

 to the feathers of the Turkis or Ginny hen/' This bird 

 is the Nnmidia meleagris, or Guinea-fowl. The plant is 

 sometimes called erroneously the wild tulip another species 

 altogether. 



