SPRING BLOSSOMS. 213 



the pretty cyclamen, the scarlet anemone, and the 

 turban ranunculus with its quaintly striped and 

 8])otted buttons. Every one of these, as well as 

 the less familiar winter aconites, white snowflakes, 

 Siberian squills, and blue grape-hyacinths, grows 

 exclusively from bulbs or tubers. Not a single 

 conspicuous ornament of our spring gardens but 

 owes its beauty in like manner to a buried store of 

 garnered nutriment. 



If we look abroad to the pretty wild-flowers of 

 English and American fields and meadov s, the 

 same curious coincidence is even more strongly 

 forced upon our notice, and the meaning of the 

 facts on which the law depends brought home to 

 us yet more clearly. The brilliant coltsfoot, that 

 bright golden mass of fluffy blossom that often 

 makes gay and beautiful the banks of railway-cut- 

 tings in suburban London throughout the chilly 

 days of March and April, springs from a long and 

 stout buried rootstock, and unfolds its leafless 

 head naked to the breezes, being followed only 

 after long weeks of interval by the large and 

 stately spreading foliage. So too with the Amer- 

 ican hepatica and bloodroot. The lesser celan- 

 dine, a low but beautiful species of the buttercup 

 genus that spangles the meadows with its golden 

 stars long before any other cons})icuous flower has 

 begun to open in the English fields, possesses in- 

 numerable tiny round tubers on its roots, which 



