THE TRIUMPHANT BLUEBELL 73 



wild hyacinth by the name of bluebell. We shall 

 give none. Our own bluebell is as dear to us as the 

 harebell or hairbell to Scotland. We have not sung 

 it so sweetly in verse, or dipped it in political tradi- 

 tion, merely because that is not our way. But we 

 cannot consent to find another name for the light of 

 our woodlands, still less to transfer it to the hairbell 

 that swings so sparingly on our downs, by comparison 

 with the luxuriance that has earned it the attention 

 of Scottish poets. 



Nor would the name " wild hyacinth " be tolerated 

 by certain would-be precisians of another school. 

 Not a few botanists have violated anatomy by placing 

 our bluebell among the squills. S 'cilia nutans they 

 call it, the squill that nods, preferring to put it in a 

 genus where it becomes an exception, rather than let 

 it remain in one where, to the ordinary observer at 

 any rate, it is well at home. The crowd follows the 

 lead with the crowd's usual eagerness. The other 

 day we had the pleasure of reading in a daily paper 

 that " the bluebell is a little like the garden hyacinth, 

 but," etc. So much the worse for the garden hyacinth. 

 The difference between them is almost entirely due 

 to the overfeeding and tasteless selection of the 

 civilised species. 



Out upon Scilla as a generic term for our bluebell. 

 Hyacintkus non-scriptus is as suitable, and far prettier. 

 It recalls, too, in a happy way, the fable that has been 

 overwhelmed by the uncouth proportions of the 

 potted flower. When Hyacinth, beloved by Apollo 

 and Zephyr, was slain by the jealousy of the latter, 

 his blood not only became a flower of the same colour 

 (something between the yellow and the deep Oxford 



