NAMES OF FLOWERS. 
141 
poor Ophelia prattling to Laertes about the wreath she had wo- 
ven ; instead of her " rosemary," and " pansies," and " herb- 
o'grace," hear her discourse about " Plantanthera Blepharoglottis, 
or Psycodes, Ageratum, Syntheris, Houghtoniana, Banksia, and 
Jeffersonia," &c., &c. Could her brother in that case have pos- 
sibly called her 0, rose of May, dear maid, kind sister, sweet 
Ophelia ?" No, indeed ! And we may rest assured, that if the 
daisy, the douce Marguerito, had borne any one of these names, 
Chaucer would have snapped his fingers at it. We may feel con- 
fident that Shakspeare would then have showed it no mercy ; all 
his fairies would have hooted at it ; he would have tossed it to 
Sycorax and Caliban ; he would not have let either Perdita or 
Ophelia touch it, nor Miranda, with her ties doux regarder, look 
at it once. 
Neither daisy, nor cowslip, nor snow-drop is found among the 
fields of the New World, but blossoms just as sweet and pretty 
are not wanting here, and it is really a crying shame to misname 
them. Unhappily, a large number of our plants are new discov- 
eries — new, at least, when compared with Chaucer's daisy, Spen- 
ser's coronation flower, or Shakspeare's " pansies and herb- 
o'grace " — and having been first gathered since the days of Lin- 
naeus, as specimens, their names tell far more of the musty hortus 
siccus, than of the gay and fragrant May-pole. But if we wish 
those who come after us to take a natural, unaffected pleasure in 
flowers, we should have names for the blossoms that mothers 
and nurses can teach children before they are " in Botany ;" if 
we wish that American poets should sing our native flowers as 
sweetly and as simply as the daisy, and violets, and celandine 
have been sung from the time of Chaucer or Herrick, to tliat of 
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