6o 
SHAKESPEARE’S GARDEN 
Bring coronations and sops-in-wine 
Worn of paramours. 
We have already pointed out under June that the 
source of our garden carnations is the semi-wild 
Dianthus caryophyllus , L. It may be worth while 
noting that the popular white and pink pinks of our 
garden are of far later introduction. 
The flax, although a useful plant, and as such, 
perhaps, unfitted for a position among the flowers, 
whether of field or garden, yet is none the less an 
object of beauty, since its dazzling blue is of the 
sky’s own tint. Few plants are more useful to man, 
few better deserve their specific names. Linum 
usitatissimum , L., is not a native; it is, however. 
Hooker says, naturalized wherever flax is culti¬ 
vated for oil or fibre. Such cultivation began ex¬ 
ceedingly early. The seeds of the allied L. angusti- 
folium, L., are found among the debris of the lake- 
dwellings. The neolithic peoples appear to have 
been the first to introduce spinning, if we may judge 
from the pottery spindle-whorls found among their 
remains, and until the discovery of cotton it held 
its own as a textile fabric among all nations. The 
species mentioned above, L. angustifolium , L., is found 
with us south of Lancashire, while the beautiful L. 
perenne , L., is much more uncommon, though occasion¬ 
ally found in chalk districts from Durham to Essex. 
The little white-flowered purging flax, L. catharticum , 
L., is a Warwickshire plant, and quite at home on 
old walls and dry banks. 
In the plays its inflammable nature is twice 
mentioned—of course in the form of tow—viz., in 
2 Henry VI., V. ii. 55, and in I wo Noble Kinsmen, 
V. iii. 113. As lint it is mentioned together with 
white of egg: 
Go thou : I’ll fetch some flax and whites of egg 
To apply to his bleeding face. 
King Lear, III. vii. 106. 
