WILD HYACINTHS. 21 



not be able to bloom so early in the year. Black Dog 

 Mead is now all full of buttercups which a townsman 

 would never know from the summer kind ; for the flowers 

 are just the same, and townsmen seldom trouble their 

 heads about stems, or roots, or foliage. But the country- 

 man knows the two weeds apart right well, for one is a 

 much more troublesome intruder in a meadow than the 

 other. This early form is the bulbous buttercup, and 

 it flowers first just because of its bulb. After it has 

 withered and set its seed, the regular meadow buttercups 

 begin to blossom, having had time to collect enough 

 material for their flowers meanwhile. The leaves and 

 root are quite different, and so is the calyx ; and these 

 minor peculiarities are, no doubt, correlated in some 

 curious way with the various needs of the two plants, 

 though no one can yet tell us how. 



It is just the same with the hyacinth. Its long blade- 

 like leaves laid by materials for growth last summer, and 

 stored them up in the bulb ; and that enables them now 

 to steal a march upon the annuals or thriftless perennials, 

 and to entice the spring insects long before their loitering 

 rivals have got out of their buds. It is the early bell that 

 catches the bee. Only, both flowers and insects need to 

 follow one another in a fixed succession throughout the 

 year, or else there would not be food and visitors for 

 both. The bees, too, have their calendar. Their year 

 begins with gorse and willow catkins ; goes on to prim- 

 roses and hyacinths ; continues with mint, thyme, ram- 

 pion, and heather ; and finishes up at last with hawkweed, 

 hemp-nettle, and meadow-saffron. Where all the bulbs, 

 roots, and tubers can find room in the ground, however, 

 is a mystery ; for one and the same field will be thick 



