New-York tribune., 1905-06-25
III O w

months bring in the flowers, THE pretty
daughters of the earth and sun" and
still, for the wise and curious, is their
inherent beauty set off by those quaint
old legends of classic association or by
fairy lore more Germanic than GreCian,
which have come down to these more
prosaic times, concealed in names which
are called unthinkingly in every market
in the land.
In one corner of the yard rises in purple
dignity the iris-its name-parent, remem-
Der, was that rainbow messenger of the
mighty Juno. Not far off springs up the
more modest peony; and its father, as
far at least as title may go, was that clever
Ppon, physician in ordinary to the deities
of high Olympus, who with the roots
of this flower healed the wounds of god
desses and heroes. Even now that same
traction fingers, though unwilling of its
source, in those country districts where
the children wear bead necklaces carved
of peonv-roots to ward off sickness.
The violet is so-called from hapless 10,
the daughter of that ancient river god
Inachus. who, when metamorphOsed by
Juno 11lJO d NllllC HClICl NCiS pSiojIICC
on those tiny purple stars. She was
to give name, too, to the 1Onian Sea
and to the BOsphorus e. 'cow-carrier y
which at another time bore her safely away
from TunO's Jealous wrath; but the flower
which Yale University has since adopted
as its own is far indeed from the only
one which gOssips in its name of those
love affairs of the springtime OF the an
cient world. The syringa, for instance,
was once upon a time the nymph SyrinX,
attendant on Diana herself and we'll
beloved of ali dryads. Beloved, too, of
the great Pan, tradition tells, and
fleeing his too-warm embraces, her friends
the wood nvmphs came to her rescue,
Transforming her into those very reeds
from which the arnorous deity promptly
fashioned his magic pipes.
Such memories of long past loves linger
in the datIodils, the mint, the laurel and
the sad cypress. For the daffodils, white
as the driven snow in those earlier days,
were the blossoms with which Proser-
pines arms were laden when she was
carried of by grim Pluto his ardent
touch turning them yellow for all time
to come. Proserpine, too, figures again
in the story of the mint, for when tickle
Pluto had transferred his affections to
fair Minthe, the earlier sweetheart
avenged herself upon the latter by
changing her into the aromatic plant.
The laurel was once the nymph Daphne,
and the cypress was Cyparissus, both
wooed by Apollo during those incognito
trips of his when the gay god sought
amusement under a shepherds guise
Daphne, as Syrinx, was given a flower
form to save her from unwelcome Caresses,
but Cyparissus warmly greeted her inn
mortal lover-and SO was soon deserted
whereupon she pined away and became
foster-mother of the emblem of sorrow.
The April hvacinth tells yet another
Apollo story for its name was once born
by the handsome young son of Amyclas,
King of Sparta His beauty appealed to
the god who undertook his education,
beginning with the physical training of
quot pitching, but the first disk
hurled by Apollo swerved from his hand
and crashed into the skull of the little
prince SO was he turned into a blossom,
whose petals are said by old tradition to
bear the exclamations of the sOrrowing