WINTER FLOWERS. 47 



Sweet, and of Loudon, will help us in our choice 

 of flowers, whether annuals or herbaceous plants. 

 It is impossible to do more than recall the 

 names of some of the oldest favourites : and first 

 among the flowers of the year is the Christmas 

 rose. " I saw," quaintly says old Sir Thomas 

 Browne's son, writing in 1664, "I saw black helle- 

 bore in flower which is white ; " and certainly 

 clusters of the large Christmas rose, especially 

 when the slight protection of a bell-glass has been 

 given to them, are hardly less beautiful than the 

 Eucharis itself. 1 Then come the snowdrops, 

 which should be planted not only on the border, 

 but on some bit of grass, where they may remain 

 undisturbed till the leaves have died away. There 

 is a delightful passage in Forbes Watson's Flowers 

 and Gardens (and Ruskin himself has hardly 

 entered into the secret life of plants more sympa- 

 thetically), in which, speaking of the first snow- 

 drop of the year, he says : 



" In this solitary coming forth, which is far more beautiful when 

 we chance to see it thus amidst the melting snow rather than on the 



1 See Note V., on the Christmas Rose. 



