MAY 61 



tiltSy australis (called by nurserymen Persica), and 

 undulatcefolia. I also much admire T. retroflexa, a 

 most graceful flower with pale yellow recurved petals, 

 which was a great favourite with the late Mrs. Ewing 

 (Aunt Judy), and I think there are none more beauti- 

 ful than the two European species, T. Clusiana from 

 Mentone, and T. sylvestris. In my own garden I have 

 never seen a flower of T. Clusiana, though it sends up 

 leaves every year, but T. sylvestris is abundant in flower 

 and very beautiful. It is the only tulip that can be 

 called Northern, and botanists doubt its being a true 

 native of Britain ; but I have seen it in abundance on a 

 barren hillside near Bath, far from houses, and where 

 it seems most certainly wild, and it is almost the only 

 plant that grows well there, except the Bath asparagus, 

 Ornithogalum Pyrenaicum, which is equally abundant. 



I must say something more about the tulip, for it 

 has both a literary and botanic interest. Besides 

 the literature on the ' tulipo-mania,' which I have 

 already mentioned, the writers of the seventeenth 

 and eighteenth centuries seem to have thought that 

 no words were sufficient to express their admiration 

 of the tulip. Of course such writers are for the 

 most part writers on flowers; for, in spite of the 

 popularity of the flower, it does not seem to have 

 found any such place in general literature as the 



