MARCH 83 



reward for all this terrible anxiety extract one lovely 

 little springer of nine pounds from behind a rocky 

 ledge in the rapids, and then all is over for this day. 

 The flood comes tumbling down, filling the channel 

 from bank to brae ; there is nothing for it but to repair 

 to the hostelry of Newton Stewart, and fill the idle 

 hours till the night mail for London is due by recording 

 impressions of delights too pure to be committed to 

 oblivion. 



XXIII 



He that hath two cakes of bread/ quoth Mahomet, 

 ' let him sell one of them and buy flowers of 

 narcissus ; for bread is but food for the body, 

 but narcissus is nourishment for the soul. peer 

 The pundits have endeavoured with very indifferent 

 success, as some think to prove that neither the flower 

 by which the Prophet of Islam set much store, nor 

 Homer's vdpKio-o-os, is to be identified with any species 

 of the genus named Narcissus by modern botanists. 

 Seeing, however, what slippery things plant names are, 

 how they are shifted from one flower to another in the 

 course of generations (what we know as wallflower was 

 the heart's-ease and Viola of early English writers), 

 little weight can be attached to the nomenclature of 

 different periods. Many kinds of what we know as 

 narcissus abound in Asia Minor, conspicuous among 

 all flowers both for beauty and fragrance, and more 

 likely than most others to have delighted both the 

 poet and the prophet. 



