SPRING FLOWERS 109 



the narrow tracks ; for there delicate petals may 

 expand without risk of searing wind, and the 

 sunshine is filtered gently through the bare oak 

 boughs. There are glades of narcissus, not only 

 the common English daffodil, dear to Herrick and 

 Wordsworth (than which none can be more perfect), 

 but also the many forms into which it has sported, 

 as well as distinct species, such as Ucolor, with 

 golden tube and broad creamy sepals, and its 

 grander variety, Horsfieldii ; pallid, nodding cernuus ; 

 graceful incompamUlis in many shades, and its 

 double form, * butter-and-eggs ' ; the quaint bulboco- 

 divm, or hoop petticoat, golden or primrose-hued ; 

 the delicate cyclamineus, with sepals smartly re- 

 flexed ; and, rarest of all, the tiny minimus, ' whose 

 nose,' saith Parkinson, ' doth mostly rest upon the 

 ground.' All these gain a degree of grace in this 

 woodland, which those who have seen them only in 

 formal borders can scarcely realise. 



Then there are sheets of anemones not only our 

 native wood species, with white or flushed flowers, 

 but its near relative, equally hardy and profuse in 

 bloom, the skyblue appenina, and Robinsoni with 

 bronzy foliage and petals of delicate lavender hue. 

 In sunny spots the intensely scarlet Anemone fulgens 



