Flowers and Gardens 



think of sheep and lambs more parti- 

 cularly ; and these ideas are carried out 

 in the whiteness and milky cleanliness of 

 the sleek downy skin, in the fat legs of 

 unequal size, with their lame irregular 

 drooping, as it might be the legs of the 

 little ones crowding round their mothers, 

 and the flowers breathing fragrance sweeter 

 than the sweetest breath of kine. I know 

 how little sensible these remarks will 

 appear to the unimaginative ; but I am 

 dealing with facts as they are, and not 

 as we may think they ought to be. Our 

 impressions of flowers are largely built 

 up of these broken multitudinous hintings, 

 often exceedingly vague and indefinite, 

 but by no means wholly arbitrary. It 

 is from these dim suggestions that our 

 ancestors have drawn our present names 

 of flowers, sometimes with deep insight 

 and poetic truth, sometimes with all sorts 

 of flighty and fantastic colouring, lent by 

 medicine, astrology, or alchemy. To take 

 a few examples. In Bee Orchis, Turk s- 

 Cap Lily, Corn Blue-bottle, the resem- 

 blance is unmistakably clear, the last name 

 of course pointing at the swollen look of 

 the flower-cup. Archangel (White Dead 

 Nettle), Lady's Fingers, Cuckoo Pint, 

 and Cowslip are more indefinite ; you feel 



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