10 
LANGUAGE OF FLOWERS. 
periodica) publications made, a few years since, 
the following observations:— 
Shakspeare has evinced in several of his plays 
a knowledge and a love of flowers, but in no 
instance has he shown his taste and judgment in 
the selection of them with greater effect than in 
forming the coronal wreath of the lovely maniac, 
Ophelia. The Queen describes the garland as 
composed of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and 
long-purples : and there can be no question that 
Shakspeare intended them all to have an em¬ 
blematic meaning. 
The crowflower is a species of lychnis, al¬ 
luded to by Drayton in his Polyolbion. The 
common English name is meadow lychnis, or 
meadow campion. It is sometimes found double 
in our own hedge-rows, but more commonly in 
France; and in this form we are told by Par¬ 
kinson it was called The fayre Mayde of France. 
It is to this name and to this variety that Shak¬ 
speare alludes in Hamlet. 
The long-purples are commonly called dead 
men’s hands, or figures. 
“ Our cold maids do dead men’s fingers call them.” 
The daisy (or day’s-eye) imports the pure vir- 
