Apollo for the death of his favourite, 

 Hyacinthus. 



" The melancholy hyacinth, that weeps 

 All night and never lifts an eye all day," 



as one poet phrases it, hangs his head 

 overburdened with sweetness. Like 

 the crocus, the hyacinth rejoices in the 

 colour purple, beginning at a shade so 

 pale that it seems more like the tint 

 of far-away hills than a flower near at 

 hand, and coming down through an 

 hundred tones to that deep, dark tint 

 that we associate with the words 

 "royal purple." 



The wild hyacinth, the grape hya- 

 cinth, with its flowers which never 

 seem to fully expand, range through 

 many lovely shades of that most rare 

 of all colours in nature, blue. 



Sir John Lubbock, the eminent 

 English naturalist, has an explanation 

 for this rarity, and says : — 



" If blue is the favourite colour of 



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