ere is a forgotten old English name which
pleases me more, viz., quick-in-the-hand, that is to say
alive-in-the-hand. This use of the word survives in the familiar phrase
"the quick and the dead."

The English name of _Echium vulgare_ is viper's bugloss--this I had
always imagined referred to the forked tongue (the style) which projects
from the flower. But it is said to be so named from the seeds resembling
a viper's head. This is certainly the case, and what can be the function
of the little knobs on the seed, which represent eyes, I cannot imagine.
The name bugloss is derived from the Greek and means ox-tongue--no doubt
in reference to the plant's rough leaves.

_Corruptions_.--Another and greater class of names comprises those which
are corruptions of classical names or of those unfamiliar in other ways.

A well-known example is daffodil, which was originally affodyl, a
corruption of asphodel, a name of unknown meaning, originally given to
the iris, and transferred to narcissus. A very obvious corruption is
aaron, which has been applied to Lords and Ladies, whose scientific name
is Arum. An incomprehensibly foolish instance is bullrush for pool-rush,
_i.e._ water rush. This name has at least the merit of supplying
material for that riddle of our childhood in which occur the words "when
the bull rushes out."

Carraway is another obvious corruption of its Latin name _Carum carui_.
In the ancient _Schola Salernitana_, as I learn from Sir Norman Moore, is
a punning Latin line, "Dum carui carwey non sine febre fui" ("When I was
out of carraway I was never free from fever").

Dogwood (_Cornus sanguinea_) was originally dagwood, so called because it
was used to make _dags_ or skewers: doubtless the same word as dagger.
According to a Welsh tradition dogwood was the tree on which the devil
hung his mother. I cannot resist the pleasure of quoting this fact,
although it does not bear on anything in particular.

Eglantine, a name used for the wild rose, is with much probability
derived from the Latin _aculentus_, prickly, which became in French
_aiglent_. Hence came the French names of the plant _eglantier_ and our
_eglantine_.

Gooseberry is believed not to have anything to do with a goose, but to
come from the Flemish _Kroes_, meaning a cross, a comparison said to be
suggested by the triple thorns, though of course a fourth thorn is needed
to make this simile accurate. It is hard to see why a plant which grow