=ANDROMEDA.=--This shrub owes its classical appellation to Linnæus, who gave it the name of Andromeda after the daughter of Cepheus and Cassiope. Ovid, in his ‘Metamorphoses,’ has sung how, lashed to a rock, she was exposed to a sea monster, sent by Neptune to ravage her father’s country, and how she was at last rescued by Perseus, and became his bride. Linnæus thus explains why he gave the Marsh Cistus the name of the classical princess:--“As I contemplated it, I could not help thinking of Andromeda, as described by the poets--a virgin of most exquisite beauty and unrivalled charms. The plant is always fixed in some turfy hillock in the midst of the swamps, as Andromeda herself was chained to a rock in the sea, which bathed her feet as the fresh water does the root of the plant. As the distressed virgin cast down her blushing face through excessive affliction, so does the rosy-coloured flower hang its head, growing paler and paler till it withers away. At length comes Perseus, in the shape of Summer, dries up the surrounding waters, and destroys the monster.” The leaves of this family of plants have noxious properties, and the very honey is said to be poisonous. =ANEMONE.=--The origin of the Anemone, according to Ovid, is to be found in the death of Adonis, the favourite of Venus. Desperately wounded by a boar to which he had given chase, the ill-fated youth lay expiring on the blood-stained grass, when he was found by Venus, who, overcome with grief, determined that her fallen lover should hereafter live as a flower. “Then on the blood sweet nectar she bestows; The scented blood in little bubbles rose; Little as rainy drops, which flutt’ring fly, Borne by the winds, along a lowering sky. Short time ensued till where the blood was shed A flower began to rear its purple head. Such as on Punic Apples is revealed, Or in the filmy rind but half concealed, Still here the fate of lovely forms we see, So sudden fades the sweet Anemone. The feeble stems to stormy blasts a prey, Their sickly beauties droop and pine away. The winds forbid the flowers to flourish long, Which owe to winds their names in Grecian song.”--_Congreve._ The Greek poet, Bion, in his epitaph on Adonis, makes the Anemone the offspring of the tears of the sorrowing Venus. “Alas the Paphian! fair Adonis slain! Tears plenteous as his blood she pours amain, But gentle flowers are born and bloom around From every drop that falls upon the ground. Where streams his blood, there blushing springs the Rose, And where a tear has dropped, a Wind-flower blows.” Rapin, in his poem, gives a somewhat similar version of the origin of the Anemone. He says:-- “For while what’s mortal from his blood she freed, And showers of tears on the pale body shed, Lovely Anemones in order rose, And veiled with purple palls the cause of all her woes.”