SCOTTISH GAEDENS 



than its natural date. If the ground happens to 

 be iron-bound with frost in January, then the snow- 

 drops potted and kept under glass will get a start 

 of their brethren in the open air; but not before 

 the time when the latter would have flowered had 

 it been physically possible for them to get through 

 the hard surface-soil. Probably this is the only, it 

 is certainly the chief, impediment to the snowdrop's 

 punctuality, causing a considerable variation in the 

 date of flowering. On the west coast of Scotland 

 I have gathered the first snowdrop on 19th December 

 in one winter ; in other seasons not until 8th or 10th 

 January. 



In the year aforesaid, I asked Mr. Dorrien Smith, 

 than whom nobody has a more thorough understand- 

 ing of bulbs and their behaviour, whether he had 

 noticed in Scilly any precocity in the snowdrop bloom 

 corresponding to that of the narcissus. 



"Snowdrops!" said he, "we can't grow them in 

 Scilly. We are too hot for them." 



Neither do they prosper on most parts of the 

 east coast; they will grow, indeed, and flower, but 

 they do not multiply or luxuriate. No : if you want 

 to enjoy snowdrops at their finest, you must go, not 

 where there is most snow, as in the midland and 

 eastern regions, nor where there is least snow, in 

 Scilly and southern England, but to the west where 

 clouds in winter droop low and weep long, where 

 the tooth of frost seldom strikes so deep as to arrest 

 all growth, 



24 



