116 APRIL 



Daffodils (let alone the florist's varieties) come 

 fairly well out of it. Narcissus tricolor, odorus, jon- 

 quilla, were so called of old, in the good days of 

 Gerarde and Parkinson, and their names mingle 

 prettily with memories of March winds and suns. 

 Poeticus, too, the exquisite pheasant-eye narcissus, 

 latest to flower, brings to mind the deep orchard 

 grass of May, when the apple-trees shed their bloom. 

 But who shall explain the fitness of associating the 

 eucharis-flowered daffodil with a smoky town, or 

 even with the Duke of that ilk, by naming it Nar- 

 cissus Leedsi 1 



Is it not mischievous that anybody should have 

 been allowed to fix on a delicate lavender crocus the 

 stigma of Crocus Thomassi 1 Such a barbarous name 

 never came out of the same satchel as the Greek one 

 of Chionodoxa winter grace for an early flowering 

 bulb with thyrses of porcelain blue, or Amaryllis 

 belladonna for the wayward Jersey lily. But the 

 witless loons have tainted this list also; for here 

 behold a newer kind advertised as Amaryllis Johiir 

 son i a name recalling the fact that, in all his 

 writings and recorded sayings, Dr. Johnson hardly 

 makes the most transient allusion to flowers of any 

 kind. 



