Daffodils 



or chalice, such as almost all the Narcissi or true Daffodils 

 have." In fact all those long-nosed ones which we like 

 to call true Daffodils he calls bastard, which is not a 

 pleasant " Epithite " to give to an honest flower. 



Still we need not let Parkinson's views weigh too 

 heavily on our conscience, for does he not include as 

 Narcissi, Sternbergia, Pancratium, and Zephyranthes, this 

 last as he says tl not finding where better to shroud it " ? 

 A still more glorious dispensation may be found in Spre- 

 kelia's appearance as the Indian Daffodil with a red flower ! 

 Narcissus Jacobaeus ! ! The vaunted pink daffodils, this 

 year's most sensational exhibits, cannot vie with this 

 crimson glory. Their stripes or flushed yellow perianths 

 remind one of a hen's egg that was left too long under the 

 maternal breast to be appetising when boiled, or " lightly 

 poach " we will hope, for as Mrs. Green knew, "A poach 

 hegg you sees naked before you, an' if it ain't what it should 

 be, back it can go without no committin' of yourself in the 

 way of a broken shell." 



Furthermore the word Daffodil is such a thoroughly 

 home-made English corruption of Asphodel that it was 

 probably made for our one unquestionably wild species, 

 N. Pseudo-narcissus, the Lent-lily, which is certainly the 

 swallows' precursor of Shakespeare, and the Daffodil of 

 Herrick and the poets generally. 



The initial D has never been satisfactorily accounted 

 for, according to the New Oxford Dictionary, and one 

 must bow down before its pontifical authority, even though 

 one misses certain traditional derivatives that lack docu- 

 mentary support, omitted by its strict plan of relying only 

 on historical evidence. I am sadly disappointed if an 

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