The prefix "common" is often very misleading in the English nomenclature. Anyone, for example, who should go confidently searching for the "common hare's-ear" would soon find that he had got his work cut out. There are, in fact, not many plants that are everywhere common; most of those that are so described should properly be classed as _local_, because, while plentiful in some districts, they are infrequent in others. Botanical names fall mainly into three classes, the medicinal, the commemorative, the descriptive. The old uses of plants by the herbalists mark the prosaic origin of many of the names; some of which, such as "goutweed," at once explain themselves, as indicating supposed remedies for ills that flesh is heir to. Others, if less obvious, are still not far to seek; the "scabious," for example, derived from the Latin _scabies_, was reputed to be a cure for leprosy: a few, like "eye-bright" (_euphrasia_, gladness), have a more cheerful significance. When we turn to such titles as _centaurea_, for the knapweed and cornflower, some explanation is needed, to wit, that Chiron, the fabulous centaur, was said to have employed these herbs in the exercise of his healing art. The commemorative names are mostly given in honour of accomplished botanists, it being a habit of mankind, presumably prompted by the acquisitive instincts of the race, to name any object, great or small--from a mountain to a mouse--as _belonging_ to the person who discovered or brought it to notice. In the case of wildflowers this is not always a very felicitous system of distinguishing them, though perhaps better than the utilitarian jargon of the pharmacopoeia. Sometimes, indeed, it is beyond cavil; as in the fit association of the little _linnaea borealis_ with the great botanist who loved it; but when a number of the less important professors of the science are immortalized in this way, there seems to be something rather irrelevant, if not absurd, in such nomenclature. Why, for example, should two of the more charming crucifers be named respectively _Hutchinsia_ and _Teesdalia_, after a Miss Hutchins and a Mr. Teesdale? Why should the water-primrose be called _Hottonia_, after a Professor Hotton; or the sea-heath _Frankenia_, after a Swedish botanist named Franken; and so on, in a score of other cases that might be cited? The climax is reached when the _rubi_ and the _salices_ are divided into a host of more or less dubious sub-species, so that a Bloxam may have his bramble, and a Hoffmann his willow, as a possession for all time!