114 THE BOOK OF THE OPEN AIR 



sure indescribable to walk about among a pink that is like a delicate, luminous 

 them ; to stand still in that garden flesh-tint, minutely chequered with 

 with its flowers, thick as spikes in a dark maroon purple, 

 ripe wheat-field, on a level with my Our older writers on plants waxed 

 knees ; to see them in such surround- eloquent in describing their " fritil- 

 ings under the wide sky in that lucid laria " or " Ginny-flower," and even 

 atmosphere after the rain, the pendu- the dryest of modern botanists writes 

 lous cups still sparkling with the wet that it is a flower which, once seen, 

 and trembling in the lightest wind, cannot be forgotten. That is because 

 It would have been a joy to find a of its unlikeness to all others its 

 single blossom ; here, to my surprise, strangeness. In the arrangement of 

 they were in thousands, and in tens its colours it is unique, and, further- 

 and in hundreds of thousands, an more, it is the darkest flower we have, 

 island of purple on the green earth, or This effect is due to the smallness of 

 rather purple flecked with white, since the tessellated squares, since at a 

 to every hundred or more dark spotted distance of a few feet the dark violet 

 flowers there was one of an ivory white- maroon kills or absorbs the bright 

 ness and unspotted. delicate pink colour, and makes the 

 But it is not this profusion of bios- entire blossom appear uniformly dark, 

 soms, which may be a rare occurrence, The flower which, combining strange- 

 it is the individual flower which has ness with beauty, comes nearest to 

 so singular an attractiveness. It is, the chequered daffodil is the henbane, 

 I have said, a better flower than the with an exceedingly dark purple cen- 

 blue columbine ; in a way this tulip tre and petals a pale clouded amber 

 is better than any British flower. A yellow, delicately veined with purple 

 tulip without the stiffness and appear- brown. But in the henbane the dark 

 ance of solidity which make the gar- and pale hues are seen contrasted. In 

 den kinds look as if they had been flowers like these, but chiefly in the 

 carved out of wood and painted ; but chequered daffodil, we see that the 

 pendulous, like the hairbell, on a tall, quality of strangeness, which is not in 

 slender stem, among the tall, fine- itself an element of beauty, has yet 

 leafed grasses, and trembling like the the effect of intensifying the beauty 

 grasses at every breath ; in colour it is associated with. Thus, if we con- 

 unlike any other tulip or any flower, sider other admired species briar rose, 



