34 ^^MBLES OF A 



threshold of the year, never see the sun of April or 

 the flowery prime of May. 



There are no allusions in old writers to the snowdrop 

 as an English wild flower. Its escape may indeed date 

 much earlier back ; but Gerard, so late as the close of 

 the sixteenth century, mentions it as a plant which had 

 recently established itself beyond the bounds of culti- 

 vation. There is little likelihood that it is really native 

 here. Even in its most secluded haunts it is doubtless an 

 estray from some long dismantled garden, of which, except 

 such outcasts as were strong enough to hold their own 

 among the rightful tenants of the wild, all trace has 

 disappeared. 



There are many plants of field and hedge-row which 

 are naturalised foreigners. Even the elm came over with 

 the Romans, and the ivy-leaved toadflax the Mother of 

 Millions of the cottage wall is said to have been brought 

 originally from the Mediterranean. But the snowdrop, 

 native here or not, has at least established well its rights 

 of citizenship. It has wandered far, and made itself 

 thoroughly at home ; and of all the flowers whose pre- 

 sence brightens the morning of the year, no warmer 

 welcome is accorded than to these Fair Maids of February. 

 The snowdrop is one flower of many once held sacred 

 to the Virgin, and it is linked with her, so monkish 

 legends say, because it blossoms in the winter in memory 

 of her first visit to the Temple with the infant 

 Christ. 



Many flowers bear traces in their common, or, at least, 

 provincial names, of this old association. The great con- 



