that year, by eating some of it in a salad, instead of celery. Dr.
Turner mentions the case of some Frenchmen at Antwerp, who, eating the
shoots of this plant for masterwort, all died, with the exception of
two, in forty-eight hours. The aconitum is equally pernicious to
animals.

[454] Phillips, "Flora Historica," 1829, vol. ii. pp. 122, 128.

_Anemone._ This favorite flower of early spring is probably alluded to
in the following passage of "Venus and Adonis:"

"By this, the boy that by her side lay kill'd
Was melted like a vapour from her sight;
And in his blood, that on the ground lay spill'd,
A purple flower sprung up, chequer'd with white,
Resembling well his pale cheeks, and the blood
Which in round drops upon their whiteness stood."

According to Bion, it is said to have sprung from the tears that Venus
wept over the body of Adonis:

"Alas, the Paphian! fair Adonis slain!
Tears plenteous as his blood she pours amain,
But gentle flowers are born, and bloom around;
From every drop that falls upon the ground
Where streams his blood, there blushing springs the rose,
And where a tear has dropp'd a wind-flower blows."

Other classical writers make the anemone to be the flower of Adonis. Mr.
Ellacombe[455] says that although Shakespeare does not actually name the
anemone, yet the evidence is in favor of this plant. The "purple color,"
he adds, is no objection, for purple in Shakespeare's time had a very
wide signification, meaning almost any bright color, just as "purpureus"
had in Latin.[456]

[455] "Plant-Lore of Shakespeare," pp. 10, 11.

[456] Phillips, "Flora Historica," 1829, vol. i. p. 104.

_Apple._ Although Shakespeare has so frequently introduced the apple
into his plays, yet he has abstained from alluding to the extensive
folk-lore associated with this favorite fruit. Indeed, beyond mentioning
some of the popular nicknames by which the apple was known in his day,
little is said about it. The term apple was not originally confined to
the fruit now so called, but was a generic name applied to any fruit, as
we still speak of the love-apple, pine-apple, etc.[457] So when
Shakespeare (Sonnet xciii.) makes mention of Eve's apple, he simply
means that it was some fruit that grew in Eden:

"How like Eve's apple doth thy beauty grow,
If thy sweet virtue answer not thy show."

[457] Ellacombe's "Plant-Lore of Shakespeare," p. 13.