40 DUTCH BULBS AND GARDENS 



grow in the open in fields or gardens, and they 

 cannot thrive, really cannot live, in manure and 

 all fat soil. All the snowdrop bulbs which are 

 raised in Holland are grown under hedges or in 

 orchards, where the roots of the trees impoverish 

 the ground and take from it what the little bulbs 

 dislike. Mostly they are grown by the smaller 

 growers, who sell them to the big ones in their 

 immediate neighbourhood. It is possibly this 

 preference for overgrown places and neglected soil 

 which has made snowdrops flourish and increase 

 so in the orchards and overgrown gardens of 

 old monasteries. It has been suggested that it is 

 because they were planted there in such abundance 

 in the old days when they were sacred to the 

 Virgin, and were used to strew her altars on the 

 Feast of the Purification, — when they, the Fair 

 Maids of February, as they were called, were the 

 only maids who had any right within those walls. 

 But since they flourish equally well in old shrub- 

 beries and orchards unconnected with monasteries 

 and monastic history, it looks rather as if soil and 

 situation has a good deal to do with it too. 



They have long been grown in Holland. The 

 old Dutch name was Somer Sottekens, though 

 what it means I have not been able to discover. 



