THE WINTER AC02UTE. 159 



indescribably charming 1 , springing as they do from the rich 

 green herbage, as if, like the wild buttercups and daisies, 

 they were members of the guy family of vagrants to whom 

 the prairie is a happy land. 



But there is nothing new or strange in the employment 

 of the winter aconite, either in the formal parterre or the 

 half-wild grassy bank that perhaps mingles softly with a 

 knoll of ivy. These matters are mentioned for the purpose 

 of showing that a very humble and by no means showy 

 plant has its uses, and is, in its way, invaluable to the 

 master of decorative gardening. The little daughter of 

 a great painter said to him one day, " Oh, how you are 

 loading that picture with mud-colour ! " The father took 

 the pretty rebuke laughingly, and replied, " Yes, my little 

 cherub, it will prove the best picture I have painted, and 

 enable you to ride through the mud in a painted coach/' 

 And so it proved ; but it was a long time ere the child 

 could see beauty in mud-colour. 



The winter aconite is a member of the great Ranunculus 

 family, in which we meet with the true aconite. The old 

 herbalists, in their fulsome writings, tired not of speaking 

 in praise of the virtues of the true aconite. In Gerarde 

 it is admirably figured under the name of " winter 

 woolfesbane, Aconitum hyemale." He says : " It groweth 

 upon the mountaines of Germanic; we haue great 

 quantitie of it in our London gardens. It bloweth in 

 lanuarie : the seed is ripe in the end of March." He 

 speaks of it as " very dangerous and deadly/' as it is, and 

 adds that it is mighty against the bites of scorpions : " If 

 the scorpion passe by where it groweth and touch the same, 

 presently he becommeth dull, heauie, and sencelesse." 



The winter aconite is scarcely to be regarded as a good 



