In My Vicarage Garden 



creeping in ; but it does not seem to have become 

 popular soon, probably because the plant had not 

 become common ; but Boyle uses the name in 

 1663 ; and Evelyn in 1664, in the " Kalendarium 

 Hortense," names among the " flowers in prime " 

 in December, " snow-flowers or drops." And in 

 connection with what I said above of Bacon's Ver 

 perpetuum, it is interesting to note that under this 

 month Evelyn says that so "it is that a Royal 

 Garden or Plantation may be contrived according 

 to my Lord Verulam's design " ; and, I may add, 

 that he begins his account of the gardener's work 

 by saying that " the gardener's work is never at 

 an end ; it begins with the year and continues to 

 the next." The snowdrop is now one of our 

 commonest garden plants, and the name is 

 universal, and perhaps no plant is so popular with 

 all from childhood to old age ; though it is not 

 granted to all to see in the mixture of colours, 

 pure white, green, and a clear gold below all, 

 purity with an undercurrent of passion, as Forbes 

 Watson and Christina Rossetti were able to see 

 in them. But then we are not all able, as they 

 were, to see moral qualities of the highest or the 

 lowest order in our flowers, or to read our own 

 thoughts into them. 



I must not trust myself with the crocuses the 

 subject is too large. The names alone, crocus 

 and saffron, are a study, and fill many pages of 

 appendix in that masterly account of the family, 

 " The Genus Crocus," by G. Maw, the best plant 



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