152 ALPINES AND BOG-PLANTS 
out the grace, the charm, the refinement, or any other 
delectable quality of Scilla nutans. ‘The one advantage 
of patula is that it is certainly easier to establish than 
the Bluebell, who is not always very adaptable. But, oh 
dear me! the advantage is dearly bought ; and surely it 
is worth the extra trouble to have a thing so infinitely 
superior as is Scilla nutans to Scilla patula. One year, 
too, I found in the woods, and collected with immense 
care, a Bluebell who had immense pale blue bracts under 
each bell, so that the whole spike looked like a head of 
bearded barley that had got dipped into Heaven by mis- 
take. Although this was taken up in flower and with a 
penknife, it has continued to thrive and increase mightily, 
till now I have quite a colony of my little Paderewski 
Squill. The other Squills, so far as I grow them, are not 
very brilliant or interesting, except my Scilla stbirica, of 
course, whose colour is of such an awful squalling blue 
that it brings the water into one’s eyes to look at it. 
The Chionodoxas, though, are all charming—Adlen:, 
Tmolusi, and Luciliae ; while of the Snowdrops my vote, 
in this mixed, vexed race, goes solely and passionately to 
Galanthus Ikariae and Galanthus poculiformis. My 
Ikariae is out and away the largest and most brilliant 
Snowdrop I have ever seen, while poculiformis, only a 
little less in size, has its inner segments pure white and 
like the outer ones, but smaller, so that the flower looks 
like a reversed snowy chalice without a single spoiling touch 
of green. Otherwise all the Snowdrops are to me rather cold 
and dreadful—icy, freezing flowers, hardly flowers at all, 
but emanations of the winter, in whom I can take no real 
joy except on a very bright or very muggy day that gives 
a hope of spring. ‘The Snowflakes are different some- 
how, though vernum and carpaticum bloom almost as 
early in the year. Carpaticum, indeed, blossoms with 
the Snowdrops, and its dark green tufts, with the big, 
