302 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



via Spain, France, Belgium, and Holland at a later date. We 

 are not quite clear how, or when, or precisely whence the 

 " Spanish White " Daffodils first reached our shores. Gerard 

 and Parkinson allude to them ; and in France, Barrellier illus- 

 trated several kinds in his celebrated " Icones." Evelyn, in his 

 " Kalendarium Hor tense," especially recommends that the 

 seeds of the " two lesser pale spurhis Daffodils of a whitish 

 green " should be saved in June for sowing, as they " often pro- 

 duce varieties." 



Continental Narcissi — In Books and Pictures. 



In French illustrated botanical works of the early seventeenth 

 century we find our white drooping Pyrenean N. moschatus of 

 tc-day well figured, as also in old oil-paintings of flowers executed 

 about 1612-20, and now in the Louvre,* or in the Musee des 

 Arts Decoratifs.f 



White Daffodils. 



Salisbury mentions that two white Daffodils at least were 

 grown in the gardens of Paris in the time of Henry IV. These 

 he defines as N. moschatus (Botanical Magazine, t. 1,300) 

 and N. tortuosus (= N. moschatus, Botanical Magazine, t. 924). 

 These two kinds, as he further tells us, he saw worked in 

 coloured silks on a fire-screen said to have been presented to 

 La Belle Gabrielle by the king himself. Salisbury saw this 

 embroidered screen at Fontainebleau in 1786, and below the 

 plants, which were represented as growing out of the earth, was 

 the legend or title " Coquelourdes-blancs, 1598." 



I shall not say anything more as to these lovely white 

 Daffodils, since Mr. John Bennett-Poe* has kindly made the sub- 

 ject his own, and will tell us all concerning them. One thing, 

 however, is very remarkable about them. How they were 

 originally introduced to Ireland I do not know, but the fact is 



* Narcissus lovers who may visit Paris should make a point of seeing 

 No. 477, a picture in the Louvre by Zampieri, who painted the figures, and 

 Segher's "Le Jesuit d'Anvers," who painted a wreath of flowers around 

 them. No less than fourteen kinds are represented, including the Sulphur 

 Hooped Petticoat, and the N. moschatus of the Pyrenees, and other rare 

 species. The date is about 1620-1650. 



t The two flower pictures in this gallery are dated 1614-15. 



