NEWS OF SPRING 



It were wearisome to multiply these instances. A stroll 

 in the woods or fields will allow any one to make a thousand 

 observations in this direction, each quite as curious as those 

 related by the botanists. But, before closing this chapter, I 

 would mention one more flower: not that it displays any re- 

 markable imagination, but because of the delightful and eas- 

 ily-perceptible grace of its amorous movement. I allude to 

 the Nigella Damascena, or Fennel-flower, whose folk-names 

 are charming: Love-in-a-mist, Devil-in-a-bush, Ragged-lady; 

 so many happy and touching efforts of popular poetry to de- 

 scribe a little flower that pleases it. This plant is found in a 

 wild state in the South, by the roadside and under the olive- 

 trees, and is often cultivated in the North in old-fashioned 

 gardens. Its blossom is a pale blue, simple as a floweret in 

 a primitive painting, and the "Venus' locks" or **ragged locks" 

 that give the Ragged-lady its popular name in France are the 

 light, tenuous, tangled leaves that surround the corolla with a 

 "bush" of misty verdure. At the base of the flower, the five 

 extremely long pistils stand close-grouped in the centre of the 

 azure crown, like five queens clad in green robes, haughty and 

 inaccessible. Around them crowd hopelessly the innumerous 

 throng of their lovers, the stamens, which do not come up to 



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