JANUARY 3 



induce them to flower before their normal time, which 

 on the west coast is somewhere within the first fort- 

 night after Christmas. Snowdrops (I speak of the 

 common Galanthus nivalis), although natives of 

 southern and central Europe, behave like children of 

 the mist and the rain, easily naturalised in the humid 

 atmosphere of the west, but obstinately refusing to 

 take kindly to the hotter, drier districts of Great 

 Britain. To enjoy snowdrops at their finest, you must 

 seek them, not where there is most snow, as in the 

 midland and eastern parts of this island, nor where 

 there is least snow, as in the Scilly Isles and southern 

 England, but to the Atlantic seaboard, where winter 

 cloud droops low and weeps long, as at Ardgowan, on 

 the Firth of Clyde, where words are wanting to describe 

 their profusion. Would that the nearly related crocus 

 shared the immunity enjoyed by the snowdrop from 

 being devoured by the all but omnivorous rabbit. 

 What sheets of gold and purple might then alternate 

 with and succeed the pallor of Galanthus. The snow- 

 drop has ever been a favourite with the poets ; the more 

 strange, therefore, that it has no place among the two 

 hundred plants enumerated by Canon Ellacombe as 

 having been mentioned by Shakespeare. 



II 



If apology is due for returning to this subject, having 

 already called attention to it in these notes, 1 Borrowed 

 it must be founded on the gratifying fact PlumeB 

 that good progress has since been achieved, both in 



1 Memories of the Months, Fifth Series, p. 195. 



