THE CHEQUERED DAFFODIL 331 
the flowers, and they were seen in every cottage; 
and as a result of this misuse the flower had been 
extirpated. 
They wished it would come again! 
If comparatively few persons have seen the blue 
native columbine, just as few perhaps have found, 
growing wild, that more enchanting flower, the 
snake’s-head or fritillary. Guinea-flower and bastard 
narcissus and turkey-caps are some of its old 
English names, the last still in common use; 
but the name by which all educated persons now 
call it is also very old. Two centuries and a half 
ago a writer on plants spoke of it as “a certaine 
strange flower which is called by some Fritillaria.” 
Another very old name, which I like best, is 
chequered daffodil. As a garden flower we know 
it, and we also know the wild flower bought in 
shops or sent as a gift from friends at a distance. 
In most instances the flowers I have seen in houses 
were from the Christchurch Meadows at Oxford. 
I know what white, what purple fritillaries 
The grassy harvest of the river-fields 
Above by Ensham, down by Sandford, yields, 
says Matthew Arnold in his beautiful monody; 
the wonder is that it should yield so many. But 
to see the flower in its native river-fields is the 
main thing; in a vase on a table in a dim room 
it is no better than a blushing briar-rose or any 
other lovely wild bloom removed from its proper 
atmosphere and surroundings. 
_ It was but a twelvemonth before first finding 
