14 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN 



or three plants, though it has been grown as a garden 

 plant certainly from the beginning of the sixteenth 

 century. Prior to that I can find few records of it, 

 but when we come to the great gardening books of 

 the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the beautiful 

 winter flower gets its full meed of praise, and from 

 that time it was never lost to English gardens ; but I 

 do not know of any writer, other than the writers 

 of botanical books, who speaks of it, except Erasmus 

 Darwin (and he, of course, may be ranked among the 

 botanical writers), and what he says may 1x3 worth 

 quoting, not only because I suppose very few now 

 read Thf //>ir.< of tht /'/<inA, but also for the curious 

 note on the plant : 



' Bright as the silvery plume, or pearly shell, 

 The Hiiow-whitc rose or lily's virgin bell, 

 The fair hcllL'borus attractive shone, 

 Wanned every sage and every shepherd wnn. 



And the note is this : 



4 The Hclleborui nigcr has a large, beautiful, white flower 

 adorned with a circle of tubular two-lipped nectaries. After 

 impregnation the flower undergoes a remarkable change ; the 

 nectaries drop off, but the white coral remains and gradually 

 becomes quite green, and degenerates into a calyx.' Lore* of 

 the Plants, ii. 198-202. 



Accurate observer as he was, it never seems to have 

 occurred to him that the ' large, beautiful, white ' 



