Purely blue, too, are some of our garden Hyacinths, especially a rather meagre single Hyacinth which looks a little chilly; and Gavin Douglas wrote in the springtime of 1500, "The Flower de Luce forth spread his heavenly blue." It always jars upon my sense of appropriateness to hear this old garden favorite called Fleur de Lis. The accepted derivation of the word is that given by Grandmaison in his _Heraldic Dictionary_. Louis VII. of France, whose name was then written Loys, first gave the name to the flower, "Fleur de Loys"; then it became Fleur de Louis, and finally, Fleur de Lis. Our flower caught its name from Louis. Tusser in his list of flowers for windows and pots gave plainly Flower de Luce; and finally Gerarde called the plant Flower de Luce, and he advised its use as a domestic remedy in a manner which is in vogue in country homes in New England to-day. He said that the root "stamped plaister-wise, doth take away the blewnesse or blacknesse of any stroke" that is, a black and blue bruise. Another use advised of him is as obsolete as the form in which it was rendered. He said it was "good in a loch or licking medicine for shortness of breath." Our apothecaries no longer make, nor do our physicians prescribe, "licking medicines." The powdered root was urged as a complexion beautifier, especially to remove morphew, and as orris-root may be found in many of our modern skin lotions. Ruskin most beautifully describes the Flower de Luce as the flower of chivalry--"with a sword for its leaf, and a Lily for its heart." These grand clumps of erect old soldiers, with leafy swords of green and splendid cuirasses and plumes of gold and bronze and blue, were planted a century ago in our grandmothers' garden, and were then Flower de Luce. A hundred years those sturdy sentinels have stood guard on either side of the garden gates--still Flower de Luce. There are the same clean-cut leaf swords, the same exquisite blossoms, far more beautiful than our tropical Orchids, though similar in shape; let us not change now their historic name, they still are Flower de Luce--the Flower de Louis. The Violet family, with its Pansies and Ladies' Delights, has honored place in our Blue Border, though the rigid color list of a prosaic practical dyer finds these Violet allies a debased purple instead of blue.