NOTES. 93 



boasts that, alone of flowers, Winter " still finds me on 

 my guard," though the ground is " covered thick in beds 

 of snow," and then it sounds its triumphs over all sorts 

 of ills, physical and mental : 



" I do compose the mind's distracted frame, 

 A gift the gods and I alone can claim." 



Old Dr. Darwin, in his Loves of the Plants, has a 

 scientific interest of quite another kind in the Christmas 



Rose : 



" Bright as the silvery plume, or pearly shell, 

 The snow-white rose, or lily virgin bell, 

 The fair Helleboras attractive shone, 

 Warmed every Sage, and every Shepherd won," 



but, when the seed-vessel begins to swell, 



" Each roseate feature fades to livid green." 



He adds, in a note, that " The Helleborus niger, or 

 Christmas Rose, has a large beautiful white flower, 

 adorned with a circle of tubular two-lipp'd nectaries. 

 After impregnation the flower undergoes a remarkable 

 change, the nectaries drop off. but the white corol 

 remains, and gradually becomes quite green. This 

 curious metamorphose of the corol, when the nectaries 

 fall off, seems to show that the white juice of the corol 

 were before carried to the nectaries for the purpose of 

 producing honey, because, when these nectaries fall off, 

 no more of the white juice is secreted in the corol, but 

 it becomes green, and degenerates into a calyx." 



Dr. Darwin's theory may or may not be strictly accu- 

 rate, but his observation of facts is certainly undoubted. 



