10 LANGUAGE OF FLOWERS. 
On this subject, a writer in one of our periodical 
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 in¬ 
stance 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 Shak¬ 
speare intended them all to have an emblematic 
meaning. 
The crow-flower is a species of lychnis, alluded 
to by Drayton in his Polyolbion. The common 
English name is meadow lychnis, or meadow cam¬ 
pion. It is sometimes found double in our own 
hedge-rows, but more commonly in France; and 
in this form we are told by Parkinson it was called 
The fayre Mayde of France. It is to this name 
and to this variety that Shakspeare alludes in Ham¬ 
let. 
The long-purples are commonly called dead men’s 
hands, or fingers. 
“ Our cold maids do dead men’s fingers call them.” 
