7 6 FEBRUARY 



the fruit trees to sleep, and that is good for them, without 

 injuring the inherent life. 



In a neighbour s house is a pot, not of flowers but of 

 snowdrop roots. Their sharp points have pricked 

 through the soil like driven nails, and there is pleasure, 

 daily pleasure, in watching growth as such, as we watch 

 the advance of the line on a self-registering barometer. 

 By all means, let us pot snowdrops ; but these bulbs in 

 the bowl are, as it happens, a week or fortnight behind 

 the date of a patch of snowdrops of exactly similar 

 variety just beginning to blossom under the shade of a 

 Garrya elliptica in the open garden. The snowdrop, 

 after its manner, has taken no heed either of the coddling 

 in the warmed room or of the frost in the open garden. 

 The species in general flowers when its time comes, not 

 before, and not after. The hanging head, which conceals 

 as lovely a contrast of green and gold as nature offers, 

 keeps the pollen dry and warm, as alleged by the ingenious 

 and enthusiastic Kerner. Certainly it resists cold and 

 sets seed more freely than any other winter flower. 

 In favourable spots almost every seed will germinate. 



Sweet scents are not altogether denied to the prema 

 ture flowers that face the rigours of winter. The common 

 snowdrop (which grows wild in quantity, especially in 

 the North- West) is not sweet, and does not seem to 

 demand the visits of insects. It sets its seed freely, though 

 unvisited ; and sweet scent would miss its purpose if 

 lavished on a world where no creature subject to the 

 lure is at large. The snowflake, which blooms several 

 weeks later, is sweet, very subtly sweet ; and it is a 

 wonder that it is not more often grown in humble 

 gardens. The cheimonanthus, best of winter shrubs, is 

 sweet, and no bush in the list is sweeter than the early 

 viburnum fragrans. The Christmas rose, on the other 



