BUTTER AND BUTTERCUPS 63 



up vigorously, remorselessly, well assured that next 

 season will bring us as goodly a show as ever. 



The lesser celandine is botanically a buttercup. 

 Most of the buttercups are partial to damp situa- 

 tions, and if we are able to arrange a little bit 

 of swamp the water-buttercup, with its pure white 

 flowers, should certainly find a place, and by all 

 means the great spearwort, with its flowers as large 

 as pennies. The wood-buttercup is a charming 

 little species, and we have also grown the upright 

 meadow crowfoot (Plate XXXII.). This branches 

 very - freely, with delicate slender stems, bears a 

 large number of bright yellow flowers, and attains 

 a height of a yard or more. Having got our little 

 patch of bog we shall be careful to secure some 

 marsh-marigold for it, a near relative of the butter- 

 cups, common enough in most places, but none the 

 worse for that. In the language of science a butter- 

 cup is a Ranunculus, a diminutive from the Latin 

 rana, a frog, in allusion to the damp situations 

 which most of the species thrive in : hence some 

 of the old herbalists call them " little frogges grass." 

 The belief that the rich yellow of Spring butter is 

 caused by the cows eating the great sheets of golden 

 buttercup that then so lavishly deck the meadows is 

 altogether without foundation. The richness of the 

 butter arises from the general vigour of the growth 

 of the herbage under the genial influence of the 

 season, but if one carefully watches the cows in one 



