The _true_ Forget-me-not, _Myosotis palustris_, is invariably found in marshy localities or on the banks of streams; but the Meadow Scorpion-grass, _Myosotis arvensis_, is frequently mistaken for it. The "genuine article" has a bright blue blossom, much smaller than, but in shape something resembling, the primrose; in its bract it has a drop of gold, and on each segment of the coloured portion of the flower is a small streak or fleck of white. Both the true forget-me-not and the false belong to the Borage family, or Boraginaceæ, which includes sixty-seven known genera, and nearly nine hundred species. It is said that after the battle of Waterloo, a remarkable number of forget-me-nots sprung up all over the fatal field. The circumstance might well be made the theme of a poet's lay, were it not for a suspicion that the little blue flowers belonged to the _Myosotis arvensis_ species, and not to the _Myosotis palustris_. But why _Myosotis_? This Greek compound surely means "mouse-ear," and what have these plants to do with the auricular organs of mice? Why, their leaves were supposed to resemble in form the ear of _Mus domesticus_. The name of "scorpion-grass" originated in the fact that the top of the stem coils round while the buds are unblown, like a scorpion's tail. It is strange how quick the common people have been to detect these analogies, and to perpetuate them in the appellations they have bestowed on the flowers of the meadow, the wood, and the green lane. The singularly beautiful name of the _Myosotis palustris_--we mean its common and non-scientific name,--is ascribed, in a well-known German legend, to the dying knight who, having ventured at a dangerous spot to pluck a handful of the bright blue blossoms for his lady-love, fell into the stream, and as he sank, flung the dear-bought spoil towards her, exclaiming, "Forget me not!" A more probable origin is suggested by Miss Strickland. "Henry of Lancaster (Henry IV.)," she says, "appears to have been the person who gave it its emblematical and poetical meaning, by uniting it, at the period of his exile, with the initial letters of his watchword, _Souveigne vous de moi_; thus rendering it the symbol of remembrance, and, like the subsequent fatal roses of York and Lancaster and Stuart, the lily of Bourbon, and the violet of Napoleon, an historical flower." * * * * *