A crop of Flax is one of the most beautiful, from the rich colour of the flowers resting on their dainty stalks. But it is also most useful; from it we get linen, linseed oil, oilcake, and linseed-meal; nor do its virtues end there, for "Sir John Herschel tells us the surprising fact that old linen rags will, when treated with sulphuric acid, yield more than their own weight of sugar. It is something even to have lived in days when our worn-out napkins may possibly reappear on our tables in the form of sugar."—Lady Wilkinson.
As garden plants the Flaxes are all ornamental. There are about eighty species, some herbaceous and some shrubby, and of almost all colours, and in most of the species the colours are remarkably bright and clear. There is no finer blue than in L. usitatissimum, no finer yellow than in L. trigynum, or finer scarlet than in L. grandiflorum.
FOOTNOTES:
[95:1] "Juniper. Go get white of egg and a little Flax, and close the breach of the head; it is the most conducible thing that can be."—Ben Jonson, The Case Altered, act ii, sc. 4.
[96:1] "From the abundant harvests of this elegant weed on the upland pastures, prepared and manufactured by supernatural skill, 'the good people' were wont, in the olden time, to procure the necessary supplies of linen!"—Johnston.
FLOWER-DE-LUCE.
| (1) | Perdita. | Lilies of all kinds, The Flower-de-luce being one. |
| Winters Tale, act iv, sc. 4 (126). | ||
| (2) | K. Henry. | What sayest thou, my fair Flower-de-luce? |
| Henry V, act v, sc. 2 (323). | ||
| (3) | Messenger. | Cropped are the Flower-de-luces in your arms; Of England's coat one half is cut away. |
| 1st Henry VI, act i, sc. 1 (80). | ||
| (4) | Pucelle. | I am prepared; here is my keen-edged sword Deck'd with five Flower-de-luces on each side. |
| Ibid., act i, sc. 2 (98). | ||
| (5) | York. | A sceptre shall it have, have I a soul,On which I'll toss the Flower-de-luce of France. |
| 2nd Henry VI, act v, sc. 1 (10). | ||
Out of these five passages four relate to the Fleur-de-luce as the cognizance of France, and much learned ink has been spilled in the endeavour to find out what flower, if any, was intended to be represented, so that Mr. Planché says that "next to the origin of heraldry itself, perhaps nothing connected with it has given rise to so much controversy as the origin of this celebrated charge." It has been at various times asserted to be an Iris, a Lily, a sword-hilt, a spearhead, and a toad, or to be simply the Fleur de St. Louis. Adhuc sub judice lis est—and it is never likely to be satisfactorily settled. I need not therefore dwell on it, especially as my present business is to settle not what the Fleur-de-luce meant in the arms of France, but what it meant in Shakespeare's writings. But here the same difficulty at once meets us, some writers affirming stoutly that it is a Lily, others as stoutly that it is an Iris. For the Lily theory there are the facts that Shakespeare calls it one of the Lilies, and that the other way of spelling it is Fleur-de-lys. I find also a strong confirmation of this in the writings of St. Francis de Sales (contemporary with Shakespeare). "Charity," he says, "comprehends the seven gifts of the Holy Ghost, and resembles a beautiful Flower-de-luce, which has six leaves whiter than snow, and in the middle the pretty little golden hammers" ("Philo," book xi., Mulholland's translation). This description will in no way fit the Iris, but it may very well be applied to the White Lily. Chaucer, too, seems to connect the Fleur-de-luce with the Lily—
