SPRING FLOWERS 153 



ally the early golden crocus. 1 With the golden crocus 

 will often come the 'pale primrose,' and it is very 

 tempting to spend some time on this 



1 First-born chUd of Ver, 

 Merry spring-time's harbinger, 

 With her bells dim,' 



from its many literary and other associations; but I 

 must not do so, for it is a wild-flower, and I am now 

 speaking only of cultivated garden flowers ; and yet 

 even so the primrose might claim a place, not only 

 because it can be, and often is, used as an ornamental 

 garden plant, but also because of its close brotherhood 

 with the polyanthus, the most effective of all spring 

 flowers when grown in masses, and one of the easiest 

 to grow. One packet of seed will bring hundreds of 

 plants, which will ornament the spring garden for 

 many years. But, having gathered our pure white 

 Christmas roses and our golden crocus, we may well 

 join with them the gem-like blues of the two early 

 squills the Scilla sibirica and Sc. bifolia. These are 

 small flowers, but not even the gentian surpasses them 

 in richness of colour, and they are perfectly hardy ; 

 but within the last few years they have met with a 

 formidable rival in the Chionodoxa, a beautiful bulbous 

 plant discovered near Smyrna in 1842, but not intro- 



1 For a further account of snowdrops and crocuses, see p. 19. 



