Flowers of Late Spring 



and flowered in September, it cannot be any of 

 our daffodils. If the flower was as abundant in 

 the South of Europe in former times as it is now, 

 it is very surprising that so little notice is taken 

 of it by Latin writers. Virgil names it, but as 

 he describes it as sera comantem, it must be very 

 doubtful whether it can be our favourite flower ; 

 but Pliny's description of it as " a white flower 

 with a purple cup or bell within" seems to point 

 to the poet's narcissus ; and it is worth noting 

 that he discarded the fable of the connection of 

 the flower with the boy Narcissus, for " it took 

 the name in Greek Narcessus, of Narce, which 

 betokeneth numbednesse or dumbnesse of sense 

 and not of the young boy Narcissus as the poets 

 doe faine and fable." But I must leave the 

 narcissus, for there is no limit to its interest, 

 and it needs no words of mine to spread its 

 praises. 



The tulips behaved this year very like the 

 narcissus. They delayed their time of blooming 

 till the weather was genial, and then they all 

 burst into beauty at once. I suppose more has 

 been written about the tulip than about any other 

 bulbous plant, and of late years the number of 

 known species has been largely increased from 

 Eastern and Central Asia and Asia Minor. Though 

 we have a very beautiful native tulip, the cultiva- 

 tion of the tulip as a garden flower does not seem 

 to have commenced much before the latter part 

 of the seventeenth century. Bacon mentions an 



