60 DUTCH BULBS AND GARDENS 



be regretted that the Dutchmen of to-day do not 

 grow the Scilla rubra, though perhaps it is not 

 unreasonable, for, according to all accounts, it was 

 not much to look at. 



Among the flowers much more grown in 

 Holland to-day than in former times iris stands 

 well first. The iris, of course, is an old flower, 

 even though it may have lost its first Greek name, 

 and taken another after that rather overworked 

 personage, the cutter of life's threads and rain- 

 bringer, Juno's rainbow-winged messenger. Under 

 various names the iris, whether tuberous or 

 bulbous, has figured a good deal in history and 

 legend. There has even been controversy about 

 it, whether Shakespeare meant an iris or a lily 

 when he spoke of fleur-de-lys in another than 

 heraldic sense, and whether Chaucer did. 



It is quite clear the old masters of medicine 

 understood "flower-de-luce" as iris, whether they 

 spoke of " the bulbous blue kind " or the tuber- 

 ous "flaggy kind," the white flag of Florence, 

 from which they, as we, derived orris root, and 

 the common yellow flag from which they derived 

 other things which we do not. Their descriptions 

 and receipts for mingling the extract with honey 

 to mitigate the sharpness of its attack upon the 



