Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 70.djvu/73

Rh while thicket has about it more of the delightful abandon of nature. We are not alone in this matter of lost words in the common speech. In England, as well as in America, the word glade has passed from every-day speech, and more 's the pity, for it is a charming word when associated with its real meaning of an open, sun-lit space in the woods, a place of gladness in the midst of gloom.

The varied features of the American wilderness—swamp and creek, hill, dale and river valley, and over all the forest of a primeval world with its wild life untouched by any hand save that of nature—these waited the coming of a people that would give them, by name and word, a place and part in another world, a world of literature. A large measure of man's curiosity concerning the things of his environment has been directed to finding out the nature and virtues of the divers kinds of plants that seemed to grow mainly for his use and delectation. This plant lore antedates the oldest written history. From the very beginning it has been a part of man's self in the food question and in the healing of bodily ills. The greater number of our wild herbs and trees, as well as the long domesticated varieties, received their names in a time so long past that only the names themselves can reveal their origin. Here is history that outdoes Homer and Herodotus and all the writings of the ancients. In the words of Prior, the author of British Plant Names, we are led, in thinking over these names, "to recall the times from which they date, to picture to ourselves the living figures of our ancestors, to hear them speaking their obsolete dialect, and almost to make the weeds that shadow their grave tell more than their tombstone of its sleeping inhabitants."

The early colonists found many plants in the new world of kinds with which they were more or less familiar. Hence we find a predominance of European names in our American flora. Aside from this, many old world species began shortly to make their appearance in America and soon became naturalized on American soil. It is a matter of some interest to run through a Gray's 'Manual' and note how many of the species are naturalized from Europe. The origins of a large number of our English plant names are involved in a curious attitude of the medieval mind toward the productions of nature. These were regarded as presenting by their forms, colors, or other properties, tokens of the Divine will for the benefit of sinful man. This remarkable idea was embodied in what was known as the doctrine of signatures, and is thus set forth by William Coles in a quaint old work entitled the 'Art of Simpling.'

Through Sin and Sathan have plunged Mankinde into an Ocean of Infirmities, yet the Mercy of God which is over all his workes, maketh Grasse to grow upon the Mountains, and Herbes for the use of Men, and hath not only stamped upon them a distinct forme, but also given them particular Signatures, whereby a Man may read, even in legible characters, the use of them.

A name that is dear to us as a welcome of the spring—hepatica—