32 DUTCH BULBS AND GARDENS 



In England the flowering of the crocus is looked 

 upon with a certain amount of joy. It is not, like 

 the first snowdrop, the solitary blooming of some 

 brave single flower, which gives hope that the 

 winter may be going, but the sudden bursting into 

 bloom of hundreds, which declare that the sun 

 has power again. A ribbon of yellow on the grass, 

 battalions of compact mauve figures on the slope, 

 whole armies, violet and white and gold, delicately 

 fragrant, alive with humming bees, definitely pro- 

 claiming the doom of winter. If this is so in Eng- 

 land, in Holland the flowering of the crocus means 

 more still ; every flower represents a separate young 

 crocus, a sound saleable corm, if the grower knows 

 his business and the ground is good. The bulbs, 

 blooming in hundreds, stand for a harvest under- 

 ground, the census of which might be taken from 

 above, had one time and patience to count the 

 flowers, for at the base of each flower-shoot that 

 the parent bulb throws up a little young bulb will 

 be found when the roots are lifted at the end of 

 June. So a field of flowering crocuses is more than 

 a thing of delicate beauty, and more than a sign 

 that winter is over and past, and the time of 

 the return of the storks is at hand, it stands for 

 so many fawn-coloured bulbs — a marketable com- 



