ny
bright colour, just as _purpureus_ had in Latin,[16:1] which had so wide
a range that it was used on the one hand as the epithet of the blood and
the poppy, and on the other as the epithet of the swan ("purpureis ales
oloribus," Horace) and of a woman's white arms ("brachia purpurea
candidiora nive," Albinovanus). Nor was "chequered" confined to square
divisions, as it usually is now, but included spots of any size or
shape.

We have transferred the Greek name of Anemone to the English language,
and we have further kept the Greek idea in the English form of
"wind-flower." The name is explained by Pliny: "The flower hath the
propertie to open but when the wind doth blow, wherefore it took the
name Anemone in Greeke" ("Nat. Hist." xxi. 11, Holland's translation).
This, however, is not the character of the Anemone as grown in English
gardens; and so it is probable that the name has been transferred to a
different plant than the classical one, and I think no suggestion more
probable than Dr. Prior's that the classical Anemone was the Cistus, a
shrub that is very abundant in the South of Europe; that certainly opens
its flowers at other times than when the wind blows, and so will not
well answer to Pliny's description, but of which the flowers are
bright-coloured and most fugacious, and so will answer to Ovid's
description. This fugacious character of the Anemone is perpetuated in
Sir William Jones' lines ("Poet. Works," i, 254, ed. 1810)--

"Youth, like a thin Anemone, displays
His silken leaf, and in a morn decays;"

but the lines, though classical, are not true of the Anemone, though
they would well apply to the Cistus.[17:1]

Our English Anemones belong to a large family inhabiting cold and
temperate regions, and numbering seventy species, of which three are
British.[17:2] These are A. Nemorosa, the common wood Anemone, the
brightest spring ornament of our woods; A. Apennina, abundant in the
South of Europe, and a doubtful British plant; and A. pulsatilla, the
Passe, or Pasque flower, _i.e._, the flower of Easter, one of the most
beautiful of our British flowers, but only to be found on the chalk
formation.

FOOTNOTES:

[15:1] Golding evidently adopted the reading "qui perflant omnia,"
instead of the reading now generally received, "qui praestant nomina."

[15:2] Gerard thought that Ovid's Anemone was the Venice
Mallow--_Hibiscus trionum_--a handsome annual from the South of Europe.

[16:1] In t