CROCUS AND EARLY SPRING FLOWERS 35 



this spring-like look of the autumn flowers which 

 inspired the legend that they first appeared in fields 

 where Medea spilt some drops of the magic liquor 

 she had prepared to restore ^Eson to the vigour of 

 youth. No doubt also it was this, and the fact that, 

 reversing the usual order, the seed heads come in 

 the spring, that gave them their old name, " Sonne- 

 before-the-father." 



The original crocus of all crocuses is now 

 believed to have been a native of Kashmere, and 

 to have followed the Aryan migration through the 

 temperate globe ; brought, no doubt, in the first 

 instance for its saffron, whereof it would seem these 

 remote ancestors of the European race thought as 

 highly as did Hakluyt's pilgrim. In its various wild 

 forms it is found now in Persia and the Levant, in 

 the Alps and the Apennines, in Italy and Greece, 

 and on the lower slopes of the Pyrenees ; and it 

 has been so long in these countries that it has come 

 to be reckoned an indigenous flower, and has a 

 place in many old legends. Ovid tells us that 

 Proserpine was picking " graceful crocus and white 

 lilies " when she was carried off. It is he also who 

 tells of the origin of the flower in Greece. A 

 youth named Crocus in love with a nymph Smilax : 

 he, for the impatience of his love, turned into the 



