LECTURE ON THE DAFFODIL. 



9 



sisting of three sepals embracing three petals. Then how comes 

 the corona here ? In some of the old books it is called the nec- 

 tary, which is certainly not a bad guess, but it does not satisfy 

 the severe morphologists. In the " Journal of Botany " for April 

 1865 will be found a learned paper on the subject by Dr. Maxwell 

 Masters, who is inclined to regard the corona as the result of a 

 combination of two rows of modified anthers. In the issue of the 

 same work for May, 1866, is a paper on the subject by Mr. Wor- 

 tbington G. Smitb, who regards the corona as the result of con- 

 fluent petal-stipules. But the Narciss is by no means alone in its 

 possession of a mysterious corona. Of the 110 genera of Arnaryl- 

 lids there are forty-two genera equally privileged, and we have 

 peculiarly interesting examples in Pancratium, Ismene, Hymeno- 

 callis, and that exquisite Daffodil of the fertile fields watered by 

 the mighty Amazon, the Eucharis amazonica, in which the faithful 

 may behold the flowery emblem of the silvery chalice of the Lord's 

 house, and Parkinson himself would have described it as he de- 

 scribed the chalice of the incomparable Daffodil, saying, " The cup 

 doth very well resemble the chalice that in former days with vs, 

 and beyond the Seas is still vsed to hold the Sacramentall Wine." 

 Nature has balanced the two hemispheres fairly with flowers of 

 this kind, and if we suppose her object to be to prevent the dis- 

 turbance of its equilibrium we shall perhaps be as near the truth 

 as at the seeming end of the speculations of our ambitious but 

 superficial philosophy. 



Another and a very great problem the Daffodils propose to us 

 is, How shall we classify them ? The student may make choice of 

 many systems or may frame one of his own ; but a perfect system 

 is not to be hoped for, Nature herself having sternly set her face 

 against it. And the reason of this is that throughout the family 

 the gradations of structure and proportion are so minute that from 

 time to time our labours fail because we cannot discover dividing: 

 lines. It is the difficulty of defining distinctive characteristics 

 that stands sheer in the way of scientific classification. Let us, 

 for example, take the system founded on the relative length of the 

 corona ; a system contemplated by Parkinson in 1629 and adopted 

 by Mr. Baker in 1869. Here we find two forms of the self-same 



