The Charm of Color 243 



or an effect; at any rate it is said to be connected 

 with the small number of humming-birds, who play 

 an important part in the fertilization of many of the 

 red flowers. There are no humming-birds in 

 Europe ; and the Aquilegia, red and yellow here, 

 is blue there, and is then fertilized by the assist- 

 ance of the bumblebee. Without humming-birds the 

 English successfully accomplish one glorious sweep 

 of red in the Poppies of the field ; Parkinson 

 called them "a beautiful and gallant red" a very 

 happy phrase. Ruskin, that master of color and of 

 its description, and above all master of the descrip- 

 tion of Poppies, says : 



" The Poppy is the most transparent and delicate of all 

 the blossoms of the field. The rest, nearly all of them, 

 depend on the texture of their surface for color. But the 

 Poppy is painted glass ; it never glows so brightly as when 

 the sun shines through it. Whenever it is seen, against the 

 light or with the light, it is a flame, and warms the wind 

 like a blown ruby." 



There is one quality of the Oriental Poppies 

 which is very palpable to me. They have often 

 been called insolent Browning writes of the 

 " Poppy's red affrontery " ; to me the Poppy has 

 an angry look. It is wonderfully haughty too, and 

 its seed-pod seems like an emblem of its rank. 

 This great green seed-pod stands one inch high 

 in the centre of the silken scarlet robe, and has an 

 antique crown of purple bands with filling of lilac, 

 just like the crown in some ancient kingly portraits, 

 when the bands of gold and gems radiating from a 



