40 ODD HOURS WITH NATURE 



in pure and appealing beauty. Snowdrops form 

 a family known to botanists as Galanthus, and 

 there are about two dozen natural species and 

 some florists' varieties available to the gardener. 

 All the natural species are beautiful, and some 

 of them are much larger than the British species. 

 The florists' varieties, particularly the -doubles, are 

 conspicuous failures to improve upon Nature. 



Extreme earliness of flowering is the most 

 marked peculiarity of the snowdrop tribe, though 

 there are species which depart from the rule. It 

 has sometimes been jestingly said of the florist 

 that in his efforts to make early flowers flower 

 earlier he has turned them into " lates," and it 

 is certainly a fine question whether a narcissus 

 made to bloom at Christmas is a late flower or 

 an early one. What the gardener has done in 

 this way some of the snowdrops have done for 

 themselves without his assistance. The habit of 

 the family is to begin business the moment there 

 is a break of the snow, but some of the species, 

 in their anxiety, as it were, not to miss a chance, 

 get through with their flowering just before the 

 snow begins. These are the autumn snowdrops. 



The snowdrops illustrate a phase in the strategy 

 of life which is by no means peculiar to them- 

 selves. We are accustomed to think of the 

 inhabitants of the sterile parts of the earth, whether 

 they be flower people or other people, as excep- 

 tional examples of hardiness, and generally they 

 are as hardy as they are esteemed. But it was not 

 hardiness that sent them to the sterile parts. On 

 the contrary, it may safely be inferred that origin- 



