Flowers and Gardens 



the unnatural posture spoils its beauty less 

 than in the Snowdrop. Now this shows 

 a form less specialised, less adapted, that 

 is, to one particular set of circumstances, 

 and so perhaps indicates a lower kind of 

 beauty. Evidently, at any rate, this sen- 

 suous gain of the Snowflake in the broad 

 contrast of green and white has necessi- 

 tated a certain loss. The delicacy of 

 outline in the corolla of the Snowdrop is 

 gone, to be replaced by a simple bell- 

 shape, only varied near the margin where 

 the petal-tips curve outwards. But if the 

 plant has lost in delicacy, it has gained in 

 other ways. The whole cast of it strikes 

 us as pre-eminently fair and noble. We 

 feel this especially in the tallness of the 

 stems and leaves, which show a most 

 graceful example of well-proportioned 

 height ; and, also, in the dropping of the 

 large snowy flowers, in which there is less 

 of humility than of the subdued yet digni- 

 fied bearing of some tall and beautiful 

 princess of olden days when standing in 

 the presence of a king. 



Here sensuousness, then, has a high 

 imaginative value. It is in great part the 

 very purity of the white which makes the 

 plant so noble. The form of the pedicels 

 is, in the main, like what we have in the 



8q 



