TOKENS 



from its goat-like hold of rocks. As it climbs it turns 

 with the sun. The pale-green, egg-shaped leaves, now 

 pushing out in pairs, are heralds of better days, no less 

 than the first purple-blotched leaves of the wild arums. 



THE era of the primulas began with the New Year, and 

 many a cottage garden can yield a nosegay 

 The now of the auricula, oxlip, primrose the 



Prime poet's " rathe primrose," that dies forsaken 



Flowers or unmarried and the cowslip, or at least 

 that hybrid offspring, the polyanthus. Of 

 these the auricula alone is a foreigner, one that vies 

 with gentians and pinks in Alpine fields, but it is a 

 very old English cottager, with a history in our gardens 

 going back three hundred years. Its name is a hard one, 

 but the florists have endowed varieties with some 

 poetical titles, like Celtic King and Erin's Queen. 

 Polyanthus is another hard name for a children's 

 favourite, but cottage children recognize one sort as 

 the Hose-in-hose, each flower having another set 

 within. These primulas play at Catch-as-catch-can with 

 Spring, throwing out flowers whenever they can escape 

 Winter's grip. 



TOKENS 



ROUGH bits of furzy waste where linnets presently will 



be nesting are now all ablaze with the 



The gold of gorse. Goldsmith seemed to reprove 



Golden the flowers when he spoke of them as being 



Lining so " unprofitable gay," since their appeal 



to the bees is wasted in January. But the 



flowers are generally praised as economists in Summer 



from the way the corolla remains open after being 



7 



