152 ALPINES AND BOG-PLANTS 



out the grace, the charm, the refinement, or any other 

 delectable quality of Scilla nutans. The one advantage 

 of patula is that it is certainly easier to establish than 

 the Bluebell, who is not always very adaptable. But, oh 

 dear me ! the advantage is dearly bought ; and surely it 

 is worth the extra trouble to have a thing so infinitely 

 superior as is Scilla nutans to Scilla patula. One year, 

 too, I found in the woods, and collected with immense 

 care, a Bluebell who had immense pale blue bracts under 

 each bell, so that the whole spike looked like a head of 

 bearded barley that had got dipped into Heaven by mis- 

 take. Although this was taken up in flower and with a 

 penknife, it has continued to thrive and increase mightily, 

 till now I have quite a colony of my little Paderewski 

 Squill. The other Squills, so far as I grow them, are not 

 very brilliant or interesting, except my Scilla sibirica, of 

 course, whose colour is of such an awful squalling blue 

 that it brings the water into one's eyes to look at it. 



The Chionodoxas, though, are all charming — Alleni, 

 Tmolusi, and Luciliae ,• while of the Snowdrops my vote, 

 in this mixed, vexed race, goes solely and passionately to 

 Galanthus Tkariae and Galanthus poculiformis. Mj 

 Ikariae is out and away the largest and most brilliant 

 Snowdrop I have ever seen, while poculiformis, only a 

 little less in size, has its inner segments pure white and 

 like the outer ones, but smaller, so that the flower looks 

 like a reversed snowy chalice without a single spoiling touch 

 of green. Otherwise all the Snowdrops are to me rather cold 

 and dreadful — icy, freezing flowers, hardly flowers at all, 

 but emanations of the winter, in whom I can take no real 

 joy except on a very bright or very muggy day that gives 

 a hope of spring. The Snowflakes are different some- 

 how, though vernum and carpaticum bloom almost as 

 early in the year. Carpaticum, indeed, blossoms with 

 the Snowdrops, and its dark green tufts, with the big, 



