78 DUTCH BULBS AND GARDENS 



They begin flowering about the middle of March. 

 Some English daffodil enthusiasts maintain one can 

 have them in bloom out of doors from February to 

 October, but personally I have never seen any at 

 either extreme date. In Holland, certainly, they 

 do not reckon to have flowers in the open much 

 before the middle of March, when the earliest sorts, 

 Henry Irving., Golden Spur, etc., begin lo show 

 colour. The majority are in perfection in April, 

 and the latest sorts, such as Poeticus and Grandee, 

 carry us on well into May ; but by the end of that 

 month Narcissi are over in the bulb gardens. In 

 the middle of April the sight is truly magnificent, 

 sheets of golden flowers in every shade of yellow ; 

 one feels a miser's wish to keep the living gold and 

 put off the inevitable time of cutting. The flowers, 

 when they are cut, are taken at the top, much as 

 tulips are, the stalks and leaves being left to gradu- 

 ally wither, till in July when the bulbs are lifted 

 they are quite dead ; a sad and rather desolate sight. 

 Narcissi are very various in their rate of increase, 

 some free-growing sorts, such as Emperor and 

 Empress, Sir Watkin and Barri increase well ; but 

 others much more scantily and slowly. The poly- 

 anthus narcissi (N. Tazetta) do not in the main 

 increase so well as most of the other kinds. The 



