Most of our readers versed in horticultural botany, know that Linnaeus gave the name, Andromeda, to a plant he saw in his northern tour, because some circumstances connected with the situation in which he saw the plant, reminded him of the ancient story of Andromeda. As these plants are well-known in America, which is their chief home, we give a modern version of the ancient tale, as we find it in a floating "exchange:"

"When Cepheus was King in Ethiopia, his wife Cassiopeia, who was herself a famous belle, boasted that her daughter Andromeda was more beautiful than the Nereids. The gods of those days had precious little patience with human vanity, and the goddesses, particularly, were very jealous of the charms of their mortal sisters. Accordingly, when the fifty submarine beauties who answered to the name of Nereids heard of Cassiopeia's impious boast, they were indignant, and acting, it may be, upon the maxim, 'the greater the truth the greater the libel,' they besought Neptune, the ruler of the sea, to wreak vengeance upon Cassiopeia and her fair daughter. Neptune, who was always ready for a shindy, promptly proceeded to drown out the whole of Ethiopia The despairing inhabitants, driven from one refuge to another by the advancing waters, went, after the fashion of the time, to the oracle of Jupiter Ammon, and the ungallant god told them the only hope they had was in chaining Andromeda to a rock, and leaving her there to be devoured by a sea monster.

The fact that the unhappy girl was a princess did not avail to save her, and she was dragged to the edge of the sea, chains were riveted upon her wrists and ankles, and, fastened to a rock, she was left to her awful fate.

" Presently the monster appeared advancing to enjoy his feast. Sparks of fire flew from his distended nostrils as he eagerly snuffed the air, and his eyes gleamed with ferocious delight when he beheld his fair victim afar off, straining at her cruel chains in an agony of terror. The monster swiftly clove the waves, leaving a track of boiling foam in his wake. Rigid with fear, and unable to withdraw her eyes from the frightful creature, the beautiful Andromeda stood, her arms extended by the chains, and her feet immersed in the waves that his approach had raised, while he paused a moment to contemplate his entrancing prey.

"But there were other eyes fixed upon Andromeda, and her charms had gone straight to the heart of a champion of whose very existence she was unaware. The high-born and valorous Perseus was just then returning through the air from his famous expedition against the Gorgons. In his hand he held the head of Medusa, the mere sight of which was capable of turning the beholder into stone, and which he had severed with a single stroke of the diamond dagger, lent to him by one of the gods. Perseus took in the situation at a glance, and he was not the sort of person to be intimidated by any kind of monster, especially when a a captivating princess was to be rescued. According to one account, Perseus protected by Pluto's helmet, which rendered him invisible, and balancing himself for an instant like a hawk upon the wings he had borrowed from Mercury, swooped down upon the monster, and thrusting the dreadful Gorgon's head in front of its eyes, froze it into stone before it could close its jaws upon its shrieking victim.

"But the story we prefer to believe is, that Perseus met the enemy openly, in the sight of the princess, and attacked him with the dagger only. Then the sea was lashed into foam, and the noise of the conflict echoed along the coast. Poor Andromeda was almost drowned in the surges rolled up by the monster in his struggles. Finally Perseus got in a fatal thrust with his diamond blade and the battle was over.

"Perseus then broke Andromeda's shack'es and bore her in triumph to her father's court. With the death of the sea monster the floods retired, and the Ethiopians prepared to celebrate the nuptials of their princess and the hero who had res cued her. But there was trouble at the wedding. Andromeda had been promised in marriage to her uncle Phineas, but she preferred the heroic Perseus to the man who had proved too cowardly a lover to try to rescue her when she was exposed to the jaws of the monster. Phineas went to the wedding with a gang of ruffianly followers bent on having a row. He got more than he bargained for. Perseus was a hero of the first magnitude in every respect, and with the aid of the Gorgon's head he overcame all his enemies. The gods were so well pleased with Perseus that they placed him and his bride, upon their death, among the stars, and gave them Andromeda's father and mother, and even the sea monster, to keep them company. And so they can all be seen shining there to this day, as they were in the time of Aratus.

"For there a woeful statue form is seen, Andromeda parted from her mother's side. Long I trow. Thou wilt not seek her in the nightly sky, So bright her head, so bright Her shoulders, feet, and girdle Yet even there she has her arms extended And shackled even in heaven; uplifted, Outspread eternally are those fair hands.

"It gives one a clear conception of the antiquity of these constellations when we know that they must have been familiar to St. Paul, for he quoted one of the opening lines of Aratus' great poem on the skies in his speech to the Athenians on Mars Hill. And they were as ancient as the hills in his day. This story of Andromeda, framed in the stars, is older than the history of Europe".