130 THE MUSIC OF WILD FLOWERS 



as we have seen, accurately describes it, but he knows 

 it only as a garden flower. It is greatly esteemed, he 

 says, " for the beautifying of our gardens," and he adds, 

 " for the bosoms of the beautifull." The earliest notice 

 of it as a wild plant seems to have been in the year 1737, 

 when it is included in a list of Harefield plants. It is 

 now abundant, as all Oxford men know, in the Christ 

 Church meadows and near Iffley, which may be re- 

 garded as its classical locality on English soil, but the 

 great Dillenius, who was Sherardian Professor of Botany 

 from 1728 to the time of his death in 1747, never men- 

 tions it ; and the first record of it at Oxford is about the 

 year 1775, when Dr John Lightfoot, a distinguished 

 botanist, notes it as growing in Magdalen College 

 meadows. The earliest record of its existence in 

 Suffolk is in the year 1776, in Essex in 1815, and at 

 Strathfieldsaye, where it now grows in such lavish 

 abundance, in the year 1823. 



It is also strange that there seems to be no recognised 

 English name by which Fritillaria meleagris, L., is 

 known. Gerard, as we have seen, calls it " the 

 Checquered Daffodill or Ginny-hen Floure." When Dr 

 Bromfield visited the Strathfieldsaye locality about the 

 year 1850 he could find no one who knew its name ; 

 some, he tells us, " called the plants snowdrops (the 

 white variety), others daffodils, while the rest pro- 

 nounced them to be cowslips ! " In answer to my in- 

 quiry the lady of the wattle hut informed me that 

 " some people calls it Turk's-cap, some wild tulip, and 

 some, who be fine scholars, fritillaries. " In other places 

 the plant is known as " snake 's-head." This latter is 

 an excellent term, for not only do the chequered mark- 

 ings on the petals resemble those of a snake, but in an 



