out of the border where it was first planted.

The purple

crocus is English, and grows in great quantities in the fields about Nottingham. It used to be a great joyous holiday to go out and pick these flowers, till the fields were built upon.

There are other sorts which blossom in the autumn, of which I will just mention the saffron crocus, which is grown in great quantities in Essex and Suffolk. The stigma, which is very large, is picked off by women and children, and laid out on linen cloths to dry in a heated room, after which it is put in paper bags and sold, to be used in many ways, one of which those who like saffron buns will soon recollect, as well as those who have to doctor their pet canary-birds in the moulting season.

Plants with bulbs have, then, as you should recollect, three petals and three sepals; either six or three stamens, with anthers; one pistil, consisting of a germ, style,1 and stigma; usually straight soft stems, without branches; leaves either growing from the root or on the stem; and sheaths in which the young blossom is enclosed.

1 The style is the long part of the pistil, and is named from the shape of the iron styles, or pens, which were used in old times for writing on tablets of wax.

CHAPTER II

MARCH FLOWERS

The Daffodil and Hazel

WHO can pass by the 1st of March without a word or two of the Lent Lily, the beautiful yellow daffodil ? The Latin name of the daffodil is Narcissus, and there was an old heathen story that there was once a youth who was always admiring his own beauty, looking at his face reflected in clear pools and streams (for it was before looking-glasses were invented), till he was punished for his vanity by being changed into the flower which still hangs down its head, as he hung his over the water.

Certainly he has not left off wearing a very gay dress, though I never yet saw him near the water, but always in copses and woody banks. How pleasant it is to see those multitudes of yellow flowers scattered all over the ground. And how delightful to gather them, blossom after blossom, and still it does not seem as if the numbers were in the least thinned. And then, when the hands are as full as ever they can hold, to tie the stalks up in a hard solid bundle, cut them all to one length, and make a present of the noble golden nosegay, or put it into a cup of water, or perhaps send it to market, where it may

be bought by some town person, who does not often see a fresh flower.

I remember that my nurse did not always like my daffodil nosegays, because there were no leaves, and she said the flowers were too gaudy, but I did not think so; the six outer petals and sepals are so soft and delicate, and the deep yellow bell inside is so bright and beautiful, and has such a curious kind of sparkle upon it, and then its edge is so beautifully quilled and scalloped. I used to turn the flower upside down, and fancy it a fairy's dress: the deep yellow bell her golden petticoat; and the petals above, her pale gauze robe, deeply cut; while her boddice was the green receptacle on which they grow.

The yellow petticoat is really the nectary or honeycup; garden narcissuses and jonquils, which blossom later, have the nectary likewise, only smaller, and there is also another sort which grows wild in some places, called sometimes the poetic narcissus, and sometimes butter-and-eggs. The petals of this are quite white, and the nectary yellow, trimmed with red, and a very pretty flower it is, though I can never like it quite as well as the old daffodil. Perhaps those do, however, who have known it all their lives as an old friend, and have put it into their first May garland.

Narcissuses and jonquils are often kept in glasses of water or flower-pots all the winter in the house; their bulbs put down long fibres into the water and suck up juice enough for the support of the plant, so that it puts up its almond-shaped bud, spreads its long green leaves, and unfolds its yellow flower, so as to be the pleasure of all in the house. I have heard of a little sick boy in London, who lay on his bed close to the black smoky window, with no amusement but watching day after day how his

three jonquils grew and budded; and when at last he died, he left them as his choicest treasure to a friend who had been kind to him.

Excepting the large nectary, the narcissus differs but little in structure from the snowdrop, as you will soon find by examining it. The brown sheath hangs withered behind the flower, the pistil and the six stamens rise like a fluted pillar in the middle of the nectary, the germ is round, and when ripe, becomes a capsule filled with seeds, and the leaves are long and narrow, growing directly from the root.

So we will leave the daffodil and its relations, and look a little farther in the copse. What are these long, softlooking tassels, hanging out of these dry sticks?

Oh, those are not flowers, those are pussy cats, says one child; they are cats' tails, says another; and I for my own part should call them catkins, though that is not a much wiser name, since catkin can mean nothing but little cat.

And pray what is the bush they grow upon? Ten to one that few of you can tell me, unless, perhaps, you happen to remember that somewhere hereabouts, last autumn, you picked a capital bunch of nuts, and have a guess that it must have been off this very bush. And so it was; and this is a hazel nut bush! But where do the nuts come from, and what have the pussy's tails to do there, since I never yet heard that cats were apt to hang up their tails to dry on hazel bushes? Nor do I think that these things are very much like them.

Ah! now you look very wise, you have a guess. Why should not pussy's tails turn to nuts, as well as apple blossom to apples? Let us see, then, what the catkin is really made of.

It is formed of a great number of little scales one over the other, some pale green, some buff, and some a little shaded with red, and within each of these scales there are some yellow things, eight of them, which yellow things are fast covering your fingers with dust. That dust is pollen, and those eight are anthers then, stamens only that they have no legs, properly called filaments, and the scales are petals, so that each catkin is in reality a string of tiny flowers.

After all they are but half flowers, for if you remember it is the pistil, and not the stamens, of the snowdrop that turns to seed, and these anthers have no seed in them. Perhaps the pistil is in another part of the catkin. No, peep into scale after scale, and still there are nothing but anthers, so that we must look a little further to find the young nut.

See here, a little lower on the branch, here is a hard brown bud, much like those that turn to leaves, except that it has a cluster of pretty crimson threads at the top, a sort of red feather in its cap. Here lives the nut, here are the pistil-bearing flowers, for the hazel keeps its stamens and pistils in different blossoms.

Let the neatest hand and most delicate fingers pull off one by one the brown scales in which the bud has been guarded all the winter. Inside there is first a quantity of soft hair to keep it warm, and in the midst are several very small green cups, each containing a tiny germ, on which grow two crimson threads, the stigma of the pistil. If you can manage to look it at through a magnifying glass you will understand it much better, and see that the little germ is very nearly of the shape of a nut.

The pussy's tails will shake off their dust, some of it will be carried by the bees to serve as flour for their