118 
THE PLANT WORLD. 
they find it, for he says: “ I myself have not yet found it there, but 
I have it in a book, glued down to a sheet of paper, which I 
came upon some years ago in a drug store in Nordhausen, whither 
it had been brought from Harcynia by an old woman who had 
gathered herbs there.” Here we have then the true scientist of 
the most faithful and philosophic stamp, putting future students 
of the Harcynian flora on the watch for a rare plant which he con¬ 
fesses he has been unable to find there himself, yet stating minutely 
the singular circumstances under which he became convinced that 
it really does grow there. 
Reading on after Adiantum, in the order of the letter A as 
initial, we find on every page things keenly interesting, especially 
provided we know the early history of common plants well enough 
to comprehend what Thalius’ single and binary, or often ternary, 
names stand for in present day binary nomenclature. On page 
seven are listed three species of Aconitum, called by him A. 
caeruleum, A. lycoctonon and A. Matthioli. In current usage as 
to names, the first is A. Napellus, the second A. Lycoctonum, the 
third Eranthis hyemalis Salisb., or Cammarum hyemale Greene, 
as you like; in English, Winter Hellebore. This elegant little 
plant with the solitary yellow corolla of a buttercup or marsh 
marigold would never by any novice/ whether of the twentieth 
century or of the sixteenth, be associated in the same genus with 
the monkshood. The smatterer, the superficial observer in any 
age or epoch would place this plant as a Ranunculus or a Caltha; 
and that perfectly regular yellow perianth regarded alone, and 
without reference to other details of structure, is what would have 
betrayed the tyro into such an error. But the skillful botanists 
of three centuries ago, if not indeed also of three thousand, always 
associated it with Aconitum, because, after the falling away of the 
perianth, and the development of the pods, the whole plant,—root, 
leaves and seed-pods—looks like a dwarfed and one-flowered 
monkshood, rather than even like a hellebore. And this proved 
to real botanists centuries ago that here lay the little winter 
beauty’s real affinity. Even the generic name Cammarum, under 
which the present writer has lately placed it, is only an ancient 
Greek synonym of the monkshood or Aconitum. Thalius and his 
