BUTTERCUPS 225 



crowfoot is an exception and should be sought for in corn- 

 fields. All the species are of a very acrid nature, but 

 the corn crowfoot, inoffensive litde thing as it looks, is 

 the most poisonous of all our buttercups : it is therefore 

 a matter of some little interest to us that our millers 

 should carefully cleanse their wheat from this and other 

 extraneous matters. The plant is called crowfoot from 

 a fancy that the shape of the foliage in this and the allied 

 species somewhat resembles a bird's foot, while buttercup is 

 suggested by the golden cup-like forms of the flowers. 



It may be somewhat of the nature of news to some 

 of our readers that the word buttercup is what the old 

 grammarians called " a noun of multitude," and signifieth 

 many flowers. To people not a few, who have given 

 no special heed to the matter, since it is not given to 

 all men to know all things, a buttercup is simply a little 

 yellow cup-like flower that each early summer-time is 

 very conspicuous, and that has somehow got bracketed 

 ofi^ with another flower, the result being that " buttercups 

 and daisies " stand as a sort of symbol or shorthand 

 for the idea of the Summer wild-flowers, as the primrose 

 does of those of Spring. We can well remember what 

 a shock it was to our sense of the proprieties when, 

 half a century ago, we found that a buttercup could be 

 a white flower. When in classic times they would seek 

 to express the extreme of improbability, nothing seemed 

 so apt as the idea of a black swan ; a white buttercup 

 appeared to be almost a parallel phenomenon to ourselves, 

 and yet we have lived to see both. 



One of the earliest of Spring flowers is a buttercup, 

 the little celandine that stars the brown earth with its 



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