XT. THE AUTUMN CROCUS. 187 



whose exquisitely pure and delicate amethystine hue 

 in the glowing sunshine is a feast of colour of which 

 the eye never wearies. And every one is familiar with 

 the pale violet saffron crocus, once largely cultivated 

 in this country for the production of saffron from its 

 rich orange style, which blooms according to soil and 

 position from the end of September to the beginning 

 of November. If the yellow spring crocus is the 

 golden sunrise of the floral year, the lilac autumn 

 crocus is its sunset, when the mountains in the west 

 have a rich purple bloom up.on them, and the radiant 

 amber clouds that lie over them seem like the stamens 

 and petals of some gigantic blossom. 



It is strange to think of this beautiful familiar flower 

 being associated alike with a season in which nature 

 is renewing her youth, and with a season when upon 

 everything has settled down a long Sabbath of decay. 

 It is not the only flower that has this peculiarity. The 

 cyclamen is a spring flower, blossoming from April to 

 the end of May, the leaves rising before the flowers; 

 but there is a species whose flowers begin to appear 

 at the end of August, continuing until October, the 

 leaves rising after the blossoms and lasting through 

 the whole winter and early spring. It covers every 

 sheltered copse and mossy bank with profuse blooms, 

 which look like the spectres of the spring flowers. 

 Colourless and in a large measure scentless, it haunts 

 the woods till the fall of the year, when it vanishes 

 to reappear again in its representative species in spring. 

 The snowflake is a resuscitated snowdrop, only of 





