128 SQUILLS 



flowers, encouraged by shelter, rear themselves to four 

 or five times the height of their brethren on the coast 

 only half a mile away, and flower a full month earlier. 

 Humble though the spring squill is in stature, its 

 subterranean parts are considerable. One has only to 

 set to work digging it up to find that it is a far 

 larger plant than appears. The bulbs lie at a depth 

 of fully six inches below the surface, and it is no easy 

 matter to get them out without breaking the under- 

 ground stems. 



What secret medicinal properties may lurk in 

 British squills we are not told; but squill has been 

 prescribed as a drug from earliest time, and modern 

 chemists have discovered no fewer than three active 

 principles in the root of Urginea, namely scillipicrin, 

 scillitoxin, and scillin. Greek physicians of old 'ex- 

 hibited ' squill under exactly the same name <rfcLX\a 

 and for the same purpose, for relief in bronchitis, as 

 our own doctors do. 



Very nearly allied to the squills, separated from 

 them, indeed, by botanists merely because its flower is 

 never blue, but always white, is the Star of Bethlehem, 

 which, though not a native of Britain, has made itself 

 thoroughly at home in many parts of the country. 

 Now the scientific name for this plant, Ornithogalum, 

 is connected with an amusing little mistranslation, or, 

 rather, with too literal a translation, of the Hebrew text. 

 It represents the Greek opvL06^aKov, meaning 'bird's 

 milk,' because the Star of Bethlehem, or a kindred 

 species, whitens the plains of Syria with its blossom. 

 The Jews had a less poetical but equally symbolic 



