Midsummer to Michaelmas 
little brown bottles full of seed are so quaint. They look 
like the brown water-gourds the Provengal shepherds 
carry. Ragged Ladies was an American name for them. 
My Sweet Sultans, or Basket-flowers, too, are backward. 
Their virtues, according to the Herbal, seem the same as 
the Cornflower, but they are given the delightful names of 
the Turkey Blewbottle, the Turkey Sweet-scented Blew- 
bottle, and Sultan’s Flower, “ because the Grand Senior 
espying it, as he was walking abroad, liked it, and wore it 
himself, for which reason his Vassals held it in great 
esteem.” Parkinson gives this flower the following quaint 
praise : “ This Flower is of so exceeding a sweet scent, that 
it surpasses the best Civet that is.” The Poppies are out 
now. I do think they are such pretty flowers, so gay ! 
There is nothing prettier than a field of blood-red Poppies 
such as you may so often see in Devonshire, or in Suffolk, 
called “ Poppyland.” I am afraid it is a sign of bad farm- 
ing ; at least so I was told. I recollect once sneaking 
into a neighbour’s Cornfield, where the Poppies grew 
thick, and surreptitiously planting some Blue Cornflowers, 
hoping thus to introduce a further beauty which did not 
seem to be present. Poppy-fields do not seem very 
common hereabouts, and Blue Cornflowers are rare. I 
remember, on the Rhine, fields quite blue with Kornblumen , 
like azure seas when ruffled by the winds. An old name 
for the Poppy, both here and about Wooler, on the 
“ English side,” is “ Thunder and Lightning Flower,” from 
an idea that if picked, and the petals fall, the person who 
had picked the flower would be liable to be struck by 
lightning. The Poppy was used sometimes as a love- 
charm. My Larkspurs (Larksheels, as Shakespeare calls 
them) are a great success, especially the Hyacinth-flowered 
one. Knight’s Spur it is also sometimes called. Pied 
d’Alouette is the French name. Lark’s-claw is an old 
English name. Sweet Williams are in beauty now. Sweet 
Johns is an old name for them, and “London Tufts.” 
Sweet William, some authorities say, is a corruption of 
“ Saintsweetwilliam,” but what particular St. William 
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