Anemone. 
(WITHERED HOPES.—FORSAKEN.) 
T HOSE matter-of-fact people who will always have a pro 
ready for their old gossips’ con, assert that this flower de¬ 
rives its name from anemos, the Greek word for wind, and say 
thence came our poetical appellation of “the wind-flower. 
The glorious ancients, however, tell us that the anemone was 
formerly a nymph beloved by Zephyr, and that Flora, jealous 
of her beauty, banished her from her Court, and final y trans 
formed her into the flower that now bears her name. Rapin 
makes use of this story in his Latin poem, “ The Gardens, as 
he does also of another oft-told tale, which states that the 
anemone sprang from the blood of Adonis, combined with the 
tears which Venus shed over his body. There are so many 
versions of this latter fable that it is impossible to say which 
looks the most authentic. The Greek poet Bion, in his .La¬ 
ment for Adonis,’’ says, 
“ That wretched queen, Adonis bewailing, 
For every drop of blood lets fall a tear; 
Two blooming flowers the mingled streams disclose : 
Anemone the tears; the blood, a rose. 
Ovid’s account of the metamorphosis is that Venus, lamenting 
over the bleeding body of her lover, endeavoured to perpetuate 
his memory and commemorate her grief by transforming his 
blood into a flower. . . 
Some writers say this delicate blossom received its name 
of the wind-flower because many of the species grow on ele¬ 
vated places, where they are exposed to the rough embraces ol 
old Boreas; and others—for commentators on the subject are 
endless—think they are so called because they tremble and 
shiver before the vernal gales. Pliny goes so far as to assert that 
it never blooms except when the wind blows; but then Phny s 
experience of natural phenomena is well known to rival Mun¬ 
chausen’s own. Strange to say, the Latin is thus supported in 
