Take, for example, the word hyoscyamus and its English equivalent henbane (which I select because it does not happen to be alluded to elsewhere in this work). The obvious and usual explanation of these names is that hyoscyamus is the Greek genitive hyos, of a hog, and kyamos, a bean, and in fact the name of hog’s bean is applied to it in several languages. Henbane, too, is supposed to be self-explanatory. But there is good reason to believe that neither of these interpretations is correct. Dioscorides, who calls the plant hyoscyamos, also mentions that its almost obsolete name was dioskyamos; and henbane is well known to be a corruption of henne-bell. The obsolete name is obviously more likely to convey the original meaning than its corruption, and therefore hyoscyamos is more likely to have meant the bean of the gods than the bean of the pigs. Possibly its name was traceable to the idea that the delirium which the drug produced was the condition induced in human beings when the gods communicated with them, or that some priests used it to produce that condition in which messages presumably from the higher powers could be transmitted. Henbane, again, is not satisfactorily accounted for by its surface meaning. There is no evidence that hens ever eat the herb or the seeds. But the Saxon name henne-bell suggests some sort of a musical instrument, and it is a curious fact that in mediæval Latin henbane was sometimes known as Symphoniaca Herba; the Symphoniaca being a rod with a number of little bells on it. This description might be appropriately applied to the plant, and we have only to suppose a Saxon term “hengebelle” to clear up the mystery. I am indebted for the foregoing notes to three very suggestive articles in _The Chemist and Druggist_ of October and November, 1877, and February, 1878, by Mr. W. G. Piper. Next we come to the fanciful and poetic names of metals and their salts, and of all sorts of chemical compounds, invented by the alchemists. They gave the names of aquila alba, mercurius dulcis, panchymagogum minerale, manna metallorum, draco mitigatus, and others to calomel; regulus, or the little king, to antimony (gold being king); lunar caustic, ethiops martial, and salts of Saturn; vitriol, tartar, pompholix, and scores of others, not selected without judgment, but intended rather to mystify the public than to instruct them.