242 FLORA HISTORICA. 



red,, or chequered with purple and white, yellow 

 and red, or of two reds. Gerard also calls it Che- 

 quered Daffodil ; and we learn from him that it 

 was introduced into this country in the reign of 

 Queen Elizabeth, as he says " The curious and 

 painful herbarist of Paris, John Robin, sent him 

 many plants for his garden, where they prospered 

 (as he informs us) as in their own native country ; 

 and were then greatly esteemed for the beautifying 

 of our gardens, and the bosoms of the beautiful." 



Parkinson observes that it was first named Nar- 

 cissus Caparonius, in honour of Noel Capron, an 

 apothecary at Orleans, who first discovered this 

 plant, and was shortly after murdered in the mas- 

 sacre of St. Bartholomew. 



Thus we obtain the period of its being first 

 brought into cultivation, a period that must for 

 ever mark the absurd policy of religious persecu- 

 tion in any part of the globe. Historians say that 

 these religious civil wars cost France more than one 

 million of men, and one hundred and fifty mil- 

 lions of livres, in carrying them on. And it is 

 terrible to reflect that bigotry should have ever 

 existed to such an extent between Christian sects, 

 living in one country, as to cause, in a short space 

 of time, the destruction of nine cities, four hundred 

 villages, two thousand churches, two thousand 

 monasteries, and ten thousand houses, which were 



