THE WINTER ACONITEH. 169 
indescribably charming, springing as they do from the rich 
green herbage, as if, like the wild butterecups and daisies, 
they were members of the gay family of vagrants to whom 
the prairie is a happy land. 
But there is nothing new or strange in the employment 
of the winter aconite, either m the formal parterre or the 
half-wild grassy bank that perhaps mingles softly with a 
knoll of ivy. These matters are mentioned for the purpose 
of showing that a very humble and by no means showy 
plant has its uses, and is, in its way, invaluable to the 
master of decorative gardening. The little daughter of 
a great painter said to him one day, “Oh, how you are 
loading that picture with mud-colour!” The father took 
the pretty rebuke laughingly, and replied, ‘“ Yes, my little 
cherub, it will prove the best picture I have painted, and 
enable you to ride through the mud in a painted coach.’’ 
And so it proved; but it was a long time ere the child 
could see beauty in mud-colour. 
The winter aconite is a member of the great Ranunculus 
family, in which we meet with the true aconite. The old 
herbalists, in their fulsome writings, tired not of speaking 
in praise of the virtues of the true aconite. In Gerarde 
it is admirably figured under the name of “ winter 
woolfesbane, Aconitum hyemale.’ He says: “It groweth 
upon the mountaines of Germanie; we haue great 
quantitie of it in owe London gardens. It bloweth in 
Tanuarie: the seed is ripe in the end of March.” He 
speaks of it as ‘‘ very dangerous and deadly,” as it is, and 
adds that it is mighty against the bites of scorpions: “If 
the scorpion passe by where it groweth and touch the same, 
presently he becommeth dull, heauie, and sencelesse.”” 
The winter aconite is scarcely to be regarded as a good 
