MARCH 85 



celebrated its charms. In Westmorland there are 

 literally leagues of it slender lines of skirmishers by 

 the waysides clustered companies in green rocky nooks 

 whole brigades in hanging oak copse. 



Only in one respect does the English daffodil fail to 

 rival most others of the family it is scentless. 



It is a true child of the field and the wood, never to 

 be seen in perfection in parterres. Much used for 

 spring decoration of London parks, it shows to dis- 

 advantage there, because, owing to annual removal, it 

 has not time to grow into those crowded clumps which 

 send up such splendid wealth of gold near manors 

 and farmhouses. For park ornament, some of the 

 dashing hybrids, such as the ingenuity of florists has 

 produced of late years, are better suited. The best of 

 these quite eclipse the old daffodil in stature and 

 individual magnificence, and the annual show held by 

 the Narcissus committee of the Royal Horticultural 

 Society is one of the most charming entertainments 

 which London affords. Yet, even there, only one flower 

 shakes one's allegiance to the native beauty, and that, 

 on inquiry, turns out to be no foreigner, but a variety 

 of our own daffodil, larger in all its parts, and with the 

 outer divisions of the perianth not yellow, but snowy 

 white (N. pseudo-narcissus bicolor). 



Most of our native 'worts' were pressed into the 

 service of primitive leechcraft ; yet although the name 

 narcissus is formed from the Greek vdp/cr), a narcotic, 

 an Anglo-Saxon manuscript of the tenth century con- 

 tains only one mention of the daffodil. The bulbs of 



