Wild Flowers as They Grow 



When Daffodils appear other flowers press close 



behind. 



" Herald and harbinger ! with thee 

 Begins the year's great jubilee ! 



Of her solemnities sublime 

 A sacristan whose gusty taper 

 Flashes through earliest morning vapour, 

 Thou ring'st dark noctums and dim prime." 



Sir Aubrey de Vere. 



For the plant's preparation for its flower's advent 

 we must go back almost a year ; in fact, to the 

 time when its one yellow flower — there is only one 

 a year — withered the previous spring, for then its 

 four or five leaves — long, thin and pale green — 

 commenced to develop. Larger, coarser, and deeper 

 green they became, and the manufacture of food- 

 stuffs went on apace within them. Oxygen and 

 carbon were absorbed from the air ; nitrogen and 

 various salts in solution from the soil, and they met 

 in the cells of the leaves, and were worked up 

 by the aid of myriads of little green bodies--the 

 chlorophyll corpuscles — which were there. The 

 summer sun suppUed the motor power, and as the 



