Cuckoo-Pint 249 



indiscriminately as Ethiopian lily, white calla, snowy 

 arum, St. Helena arrowroot, and lily of the Nile. 

 However, in spite of its numerous disguises, I dare 

 say it will be easy to recognise the plant I mean, 

 when I say that it is very much like a cuckoo-pint, 

 only with a pure snow-white hood, and a bright 

 golden yellow spike projecting from the top. As in 

 the cuckoo-pint this golden spike is the part which 

 contains the true flowers ; and the snow-white hood 

 is only a sort of shroud or cloak which covers them 

 in from the vulgar gaze. The ^Ethiopian lily, then 

 (since we must choose one among its many names), 

 presents us with a further step on the downward 

 path of degradation from the true lilies towards the 

 thoroughgoing cuckoo-pint : for, as preachers justly 

 remark, there is no drawing a line after you have 

 once begun upon the wrong track, and a lily which 

 lets in the thin end of the wedge by becoming a 

 sweet-sedge is almost certain to> end at last, in the 

 form of its remote descendants, as a mere degenerate 

 and neglected arum. 



When we cut open the hood of the ^Ethiopian lily, 

 we find inside it a spike somewhat resembling that 

 of the cuckoo-pint, but differing in one or two im- 

 portant particulars. Near the bottom, at a point 



corresponding to that where the female flowers grow 



17 



