Stray Leaves from a Border Garden 
away. It is said to have been a favourite flower with Marie 
Antoinette, the unhappy Austrian, and I have heard that it 
grows in great blue patches in the Hungarian woods, so it 
may be she saw it in the old happy days before she 
journeyed far away to France, and perhaps when she was 
in prison, in the murderers’ hands, she may have re- 
membered the sunlit woods where the dear little flower 
looked like a bit of blue sky beneath the trees. There is 
still, I believe, to be seen somewhere in Austria a little old 
miniature of this poor Queen, representing her as a bright 
young girl with a red velvet ribbon round her neck, looking 
like a bloody line on her fair white throat, painfully pro- 
phetic. The French forget-me-not is an old plant in English 
gardens. Parkinson mentions it for one, and there is a 
white variety, not, however, so pretty. There is a big New 
Zealand forget-me-not I should like to see, but I believe this 
climate does not suit it. Boy brought me two bluebells 
to-day, in grey tightly folded bud still ; wild hyacinth it is 
here and crowflower. Tannahill writes of the “ blue- 
spreckled craw€ower.” St. Dorothy’s Flower it was also 
sometimes called, because it blooms about St. Dorothy’s 
Day. A little later there will be masses of them. I 
remember a wooded ridge in Wiltshire where 
The sky overhead was blue and bright. 
The earth underfoot one blue delight 
With bluebells — the fairies had passed that way. 
The ground ivy is out now in the “ plantin ” and also in 
the Dene. Grund Davy is its name here and Ale-hoof. 
This was also its name in Queen Anne’s days, as also Tun- 
hoof. Chaucer talks of garlands crowning alestakes, and 
this plant was used to clarify ale. Its name is derived 
apparently from hu/e (A.S. crown), Ale-crown, and Tun-hoof 
Garden Crown. Its Latin name was Corona terras. Its 
name was at one time usurped by the Periwinkle. Why it 
was sometimes called Devil’s Candlestick I cannot find out. 
The tiny purple dog violets ( V. de Chien ) are to be seen on 
every bank now ; they look so pretty among the creeping 
3b 
