334 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 



surroundings under the wide sky in that lucid 

 atmosphere after the rain, the pendulous cups still 

 sparkling with the wet and trembling in the lightest 

 wind. It would have been a joy to find a single 

 blossom ; here, to my surprise, they were in 

 thousands, and in tens and in hundreds of thousands, 

 an island of purple on the green earth, or rather 

 purple flecked with white, since to every hundred 

 or more dark-spotted flowers there was one of an 

 ivory whiteness and unspotted. 



But it is not this profusion of blossoms, which 

 may be a rare occurrence — it is the individual 

 flower which has so singular an attractiveness. It 

 is, I have said, a better flower than the blue colum- 

 bine ; in a way this tulip is better than any British 

 flower. A tulip without the stiffness and appearance 

 of solidity which makes the garden kinds look as 

 if they had been carved out of wood and painted, 

 but pendulous, like the harebell, on a tall slender 

 stem, among the tall fine -leafed grasses, and 

 trembling like the grasses at every breath ; in 

 colour unlike any other tulip or any flower, a pink 

 that is like a delicate, Imninous flesh-tint, minutely 

 chequered with dark maroon purple. 



Our older writers on plants waxed eloquent in 

 describing their " fritillaria " or " Ginny-flower," 

 and even the driest of modern botanists writes that 

 it is a flower which, once seen, cannot be forgotten. 

 That is because of its unlikeness to all others — its 

 strangeness. In the arrangement of its colours it 

 is unique, and furthermore, it is the darkest flower 



