Another name for it is “Indian cress,” and, like the water cress, it sometimes is eaten, only in this case it is the flowers instead of the leaves that find themselves converted into a salad. The fruits, too, share a similar fate. Like the rest of the plant, they are filled with spicy juice. This is a misfortune to them, since it tempts people to take these juicy, spicy fruits and pickle them to eat. Perhaps the plant learned to store up this stinging, spicy juice to protect itself from being eaten by animals. But what can it do to protect itself from the pickle jar? Perhaps, however, the stinging juice was but a result of the plant’s peculiar method of growth. Of course juice must have some sort of taste, and why not a stinging taste as well as any other? This plant prepares another liquid which is not sharp and stinging, but sweet and spicy; with this delicious nectar it fills its long spur and keeps it full. The bees collect it and convert it into tropæolum honey to fill their waxen cells. This the plant does not object to. It makes the nectar for the bees, and when, they take it away and store it up for winter use the tropæolum suffers no loss. But when some one comes along and picks the fruits and stores _them_ up for winter use, that is another matter! We are tempted to call the spur of the tropæolum its “horn of plenty,” for that is the name of the horn overflowing with good things that never is empty. The Goddess of Plenty owns this horn. You can see it in her pictures, as it always stands at her side, and there overflows with flowers and fruits. All that is good that grows in the earth is in the horn of the Goddess of Plenty. It is her cornucopia, for “cornucopia,” you know, means “horn of plenty.” The goddess got her horn from the Naiads. They, you know, are the nymphs of the brooks and fountains, and they gave it to her. This is the story of how she got it. The river god, Acheloüs, and Hercules, the god of strength, struggled together. Hercules threw the god Acheloüs and seized him by the throat. Then Acheloüs, in order to escape, changed himself into a serpent. This did not help him, for Hercules seized him by the neck and would have choked him, but Acheloüs again changed his shape. [Illustration: [Acheloüs and Hercules]] He became a bull, but this was not enough to defend him from the great strength of Hercules, who seized him by the neck and dragged him to the ground, and in the struggle rent one of his horns from his head. The nymphs of the brooks and the fountains, who were related to the river god, Acheloüs, consecrated the horn and gave it to the Goddess of Plenty. [Illustration: SATURN.] That is one story, but some say the following is the history of cornucopia.