FEBRUARY 23 



now grown date from the Crimean war. Clusius, 

 who described it, noticed that it was sweet-scented, 

 but the scent is very faint. The finest snowdrop with 

 me is G. imperati, from Naples and Genoa, and in 

 some years it is the earliest, but I do not often see 

 it in other gardens ; and I suppose it is particular 

 about soil, for a florist nurseryman admired it here, and 

 at once ordered three thousand from Germany, and in 

 three years they had all died out. I have another 

 which I admire for its deep green foliage, though the 

 flower is small — the G. latifolius from the Caucasus. 



Something must be said about the pretty name, 

 or rather the pretty names, of the snowdrop. The 

 common name is not the old name, and certainly, 

 to nearly the end of the seventeenth century, it was 

 described as the white bulbous violet. Such a cum- 

 brous name might do when the plant was only a 

 garden plant, and probably not a common one, but 

 when it increased and multiplied so as to be found in 

 every garden, and was becoming naturalised in many 

 places, another name was wanted, and none more fitting 

 could be found than the pretty name of snowdrop, 

 which was creeping in in Gerard's time (he gives 

 the name very doubtfully), but which only came into 

 general use by very slow degrees. I suppose it was 

 adopted from the common names of the flower in its 



