The purple Foxglove (_Digitalis purpurea_) which every one knows and admires for its long graceful spikes of elegant bell-shaped brilliant blossoms seen in our woods and hedges, is also called the Thimble Flower, or the Finger Flower, from the resemblance of these blossoms to a thimble or to the fingers of a glove. The word digitalis refers likewise to the digits, or fingers of a gauntlet. In France the title is _Gants de Notre Dame_, the gloves of our Lady the Virgin. Some writers give Folks' Glove, or Fairies' Glove as the proper English orthography, but this is wrong. Our name of the plant comes really from the Anglo-Saxon, Foxesglew or Fox music, in allusion to an ancient musical instrument composed of bells which were hanging from an arched support, _a tintinnabulum_, which this plant with its pendent bell-shaped flowers so exactly represents. In Ireland the Foxglove is known as the Great Herb, and Lusmore, also the Fairy Cap; and in Wales it is the Goblin's Gloves; whilst in the North of Scotland it is the Dead men's Bells. We read in the _Lady of the Lake_ there grew by Loch Katrine:-- "Night shade and Foxglove side by side, Emblems of punishment and pride." In Devonshire the plant is termed Poppy, because when one of the bell-shaped flowers is inflated by the breath whilst the top edges are held firmly together; the wind bag thus formed, if struck smartly against the other hand, goes off with a sounding pop. The peasantry also call it "Flop a dock." Strangely enough, the Foxglove, so handsome and striking in a landscape, is not [206] mentioned by Shakespeare, or by either of the old English poets. The "long purples" of Shakespeare refers to the _orchis mascula_.