CROCUS AND EARLY SPRING FLOWERS 33 



modity, and each in itself a mystery of re-creation 

 and increase. 



Crocuses are not much grown in the immediate 

 vicinity of Haarlem, the land there is too valuable 

 to be devoted to the inexpensive bulb. Many 

 thousands come from Hille, some small growers 

 there make a speciality of them, and grow little else ; 

 it is they who supply the big men who supply the 

 markets. There would seem to be about eighty- 

 three sorts of crocus now, which is something of an 

 increase on the six sorts which " Robinio of Paris, 

 that painful and curious searcher after simples," 

 sent to Gerard. By Parkinson's time there appear 

 to have been thirty -one sorts known; but they 

 had begun to cultivate bulbs in earnest in his day, 

 and to them it would have been more a matter 

 of interest than surprise to see our varieties, all of 

 which, on the authority of the grower, it is said, 

 " have been derived from (grown from seed of) 

 the original Crocus vemus of South and Central 

 Europe." When this crocus was first introduced 

 into Holland it is not easy to say. Nor is it easy 

 to discover " when " (in the words of the same 

 grower) " cultivators and amateurs began to hybri- 

 dise the different forms " — nor yet when there first 

 were different forms of it to hybridise ; certainly it 



