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THE AMERICAN BOTANIST. 
Pretty names of the vernacular are spring-beauty, grass- 
of-Parnassus, pyxie, lily-of-the-valley, Snow-on-the-mountains, 
penny-wort, golden-rod, pimpernel, daisy (the day's eye of 
Chaucer), primrose (the prime-rose, of early English), "Jack- 
in-the-pulpit, gold-thread, etc. 
On the other hand are a lot of meaningless names in place 
of which the botanist has more euphonius ones — often, too, 
more designative. Thus, minny-berry for the sugar-berry, or 
Celtis, buck-bean for Menyanthes, "Water-violet for Hottonia 
inflata, a plant of the . primrose family ; false-indigo, for 
Amorpha. 
Old garden names derived from our English home, are 
many of them deep-bedded in our literature, as betony, 
agrimony, rue, lords-and-ladies, thistle, ladies-smock, mourn- 
ing-bride, cowslip, money-wort, honesty, and the like. 
I wonder if our readers, by the way, know the fun, as 
dear old Dr. Gray used to say, he had ''tucked into his 
manuals" ? He once pointed out to some of us in the Summer 
School at Harvard, in those elysian days never to be forgotten, 
the reading under Liinaria. The unsuspicious does not, as 
modern slang graphically puts it, at first ''catch on." 
''Liinaria annua, common honesty. Not native to the 
country, but still to be found in old-fashioned places. 
Lunaria redeviva, perennial honesty. This is even a 
rarer sort. 
We recall too, in sunny recollections of our old teacher, 
his comment on the name of Ailanthns glandulosiis, "called 
by the Arabs 'the tree of Heaven', but the staminate blossoms 
redolent of any other odors than those of Paradise." He used 
to say with a twinkle in that marvellous eye of his, that "a 
humorous was not inconsistent with a scientific treatment of 
a subject." 
The plants of the table have good, homely, expressive 
English names, as "carrot, "spinach," "turnip," "caraway," 
