70 FIRST STEPS IN GENERAL KNOWLEDGE. 



"What grand and beautiful things the lilies 

 must be !" exclaimed Mary. " Which of them do 

 you think it was, papa, that our Saviour spoke of, 

 when He said that ( even Solomon in all his glory 

 was not arrayed like one of these ?' " 



"Probably those 'lilies of the field' were the 

 scarlet lilies,* which still spring up freely on the 

 plains of Syria." 



Robert was disappointed at hearing this ; for he 

 had made up his mind that our humble lilies of the 

 valley were the flowers which our Saviour had con- 

 descended to notice. 



The children were told that several tribes of 

 plants, following lilies, are natives of marshes or 

 slow-running water in foreign countries ; and that 

 of one of them the only British specimen is the 

 Flowering Eush, one of the most beautiful of our 

 wild flowers, and which gives its name to the tribe. 

 The WATER-PLANTAIN tribe contains several com- 

 mon inhabitants of ponds and ditches, some of them 

 much resembling the crow-foot of the meadows." 



" I remember," said Mary, " finding flowers that 

 reminded me of buttercups in the pond at the 

 bottom of the lane, but they grew more of them 



* Lilium Chalcedonicum. 



