SCROPHULARIACE.S:. 105 
rather close when they first expand, bu1 becoming distant after the 
fall of the corolla. Corolla ' inch across, bright-blue, with darker 
lines, rarely pale. Capsule father broader than Long, scarcely J inch 
long:, often abortive. Plant green, variable in hairiness, not turning: 
black in drying. Autumnal shoots with the leaves shortly stalked. 
Germander Speedwell. 
French, Yeronlqne Petit Chine. German, Germander Ehrenpreis. 
This beautiful little plant is sometimes, though erroneously, called " eyebriglit ; " 
and poets have celebrated its charms under such various names, that it is difficult to 
recognize it as our common little Speedwell. It is often mistaken for the Forget-me- 
not by mere superficial observers, and has been immortalized as such in poetic lines. 
Ebeuezer Elliott writes of the 
" Blue eye-bright ! Loveliest flower of all that grow 
In flower-loved England ! Flower whose hedge-side gaze 
Is like an infant's ! 
And another poet tells us of 
" Flowers so blue and golden, 
Stars that iu earth's firmament do shine. 
And the poet, faithful and all-seeing, 
Sees alike in stars and flowers a part 
Of the self-same universal being 
Which is throbbing in his brain and heart. 
Everywhere about us they are glowing, 
Some like stars, to tell us spring is born ; 
Others, their blue eyes with tears o'erflowing, 
Stand like Ruth amid the golden corn." 
It is probable that in " Hyperion " reference is made to the same familiar plant when 
the author makes his hero stoop " to pluck one bright-blue flower which bloomed alone 
in the vast desert, and looked up to him, as if to say, ' Oh ! take me with you ; leave 
me not here companionless.' " 
There is also good reason to think that Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd, had in his 
mind the azure-blue Germander Speedwell when be wrote — 
" When the blewart bears a pearl. 
And the daisy turns a pea ; 
When the bonnie lenken gowan 
Has fauldit up her e'e." 
Our little plant answers fairly to his description, closing at night so as to show only the 
pale and pearly side of its bright petals, and looking as though its tiny stalk bore ''a 
pearl " rather than a flower. Among the old herb doctors this little plant was cele- 
brated as a vulnerary, and a remedy in various skin diseases, and was recommended as 
a specific against pestilent fevers. Its virtues are so curiously introduced by Culpepper 
in his Herbal of 1624, that we cannot refrain from quoting him entire : — 
