ate wife of our Henry VI.; while our Margaret, Countess of
Richmond, mother of our Henry VII., and dear to Oxford and Cambridge as
the foundress of the Margaret Professorships, and of Christ College in
Cambridge, bore three Daisies on a green turf.

To entomologists the Daisy is interesting as an attractive flower to
insects; for "it is visited by nine hymenoptera, thirteen diptera, three
coleoptera, and two lepidoptera--namely, the least meadow-brown and the
common blue butterflies."[377:1]

In medicine, I am afraid, the Daisy has so lost its virtues that it has
no place in the modern pharmacopoeia: but in old days it was not so.
Coghan says "of Deysies, they are used to be given in potions in
fractures of the head and deep wounds of the breast. And this experience
I have of them, that the juyce of the leaves and rootes of Deysies being
put into the nosethrils purgeth the brain; they are good to be used in
pottage."[377:2] Gerard says, "the Daisies do mitigate all kinds of
paines, especially in the joints, and gout proceeding from a hot or dry
humoure, if they be stamped with new butter, unsalted, and applied upon
the pained place." Nor was this all. In those days, doctors prescribed
according to the so-called "doctrines of signatures," _i.e._, it was
supposed that Nature had shown, by special marks, for what special
disease each plant was useful; and so in the humble growth of the little
low-growing Daisy the doctors read its uses, and here they are. "It is
said that the roots thereof being boyled in milk, and given to little
puppies, will not suffer them to grow great."--COLE'S _Adam in Eden_.
One more virtue. Miss Pratt says that "an author, writing in 1696, tells
us that they who wish to have pleasant dreams of the loved and absent,
should put 'Dazy roots under their pillow.'"

On the English language, the Daisy has had little influence, though some
have derived "lackadaisy" and "lackadaisical" from the Daisy, but there
is, certainly, no connection between the words. Daisy, however, was
(and, perhaps, still is) a provincial adjective in the eastern counties.
A writer in "Notes and Queries" (2nd Series, ix. 261) says that Samuel
Parkis, in a letter to George Chalmers, dated February 16, 1799, notices
the following provincialisms: "Daisy: remarkable, extraordinary
excellent, as 'She's a Daisy lass to work,' _i.e._, 'She is a good
working girl.' 'I'm a Daisy body for pudding,' _i.e._, 'I eat a great
deal of pudding.