26 COLIN CLOUT'S CALENDAR. 



first just because of its bulb. After it has withered and 

 set its seed, the regular meadow buttercups begin to blos- 

 som, having had time to collect enough material for their 

 flowers meanwhile. The leaves and root are quite differ- 

 ent, and so is the calyx ; and these minor peculiarities 

 are, no doubt, correlated in some curious way with the 

 various needs of the two plants, though no one can yet 

 tell us how. 



It is just the same with the hyacinth. Its long blade- 

 like leaves laid by materials for growth last summer, and 

 stored them up in the bulb ; and that enables them now 

 to steal a march upon the annuals or thriftless perennials, 

 and to entice the spring insects long before their loiter- 

 ing rivals have got out of their buds. It is the early bell 

 that catches the bee. Only, both flowers and insects 

 need to follow one another in a fixed succession through- 

 out the year, or else there would not be food and visitors. 

 for both. The bees, too, have their calendar. Their 

 year begins with gorse and willow catkins ; goes on to 

 primroses and hyacinths ; continues with mint, thyme, 

 rampion, and heather ; and finishes up at last with hawk- 

 weed, hemp-nettle, and meadow-saffron. Where all the 

 bulbs, roots, and tubers can find room in the ground, 

 however, is a mystery ; for one and the same field will 

 be thick with flowers all the year round, from the celan- 

 dines of spring, with their little clustered pill-like nodules, 

 through the tuberous orchids and thick white-rooted dan- 

 delions of summer, to the bulbous squills and lady's- 

 tresses of late autumn. "When one thinks of them all 

 packed away side by side in the interstices of the stones 

 and grasses, one begins to understand what is meant by 

 the struggle for life in the world of plants. 



The wild hyacinth is very essentially a bee-flower, one 

 of the kinds which have specially adapted themselves to 



