70 



JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



lilac-blue ; Laurens Koster, indigo blue ; Louis Philippe, blue, 

 lilac shade ; Van Speyk, pale blue, immense bells. 



A few of the best new varieties, not very expensive, are : Chal- 

 lenger, single, claret colour ; Distinction, single, deep mauve, 

 dark lines ; Electra, single, pale blue ; Etna, single, deep rose ; 

 Lady Derby, single, white ; Lord Mayo, single, purplish violet, 

 distinct white eye ; Pink Perfection, clear bright pink ; Queen 

 of the Yellows, single, pure yellow. 



THE NARCISSUS. 

 By F. W. Burbidge, F.L.S., M.B.I.A., F.R.H.S., &c. 

 T.ead April 9, 1889.] 



The flower of which I need scarcely apologise for speaking to- 

 day is certainly one of the oldest and, nowadays, most popular 

 of all our garden flowers. All the poets have mentioned it with 

 delight, from the time of Homer — or say, a thousand years before 

 Christ — to the days of Tennyson, which happily are our own. 

 It seems possible that the roots of the Narcissus were popular 

 for their reputed or real medicinal uses long before their beauty 

 induced people to cultivate them, and Hippocrates mentions 

 them for their curative powers as early as B.C. 460; but not 

 very long afterwards Theophrastus of Eresus (b.c. 374-285) 

 tells us that the seeds of Narcissus were sometimes gathered and 

 sown, and this is, I believe, the earliest record of the cultivation 

 of these flowers. Chronology, however, tells us nothing of their 

 real life-history, which in all probability began long before human 

 times, or at least long before written history was known. 



In the good old days of botanical knowledge, some of us, as 

 gardeners, were taught to believe that a Daisy, for example, had 

 always and ever been a Daisy, and a Daffodil had always been a 

 Daffodil ; but more recent thought about the life of things, 

 animal and vegetable, has taught us pretty plainly that both 

 are really branches of what was once a common living trunk, 

 neither wholly plant nor wholly animal. 



Then came a time when life became differentiated — plants 

 on the one hand, and the animals on the other ; and it has 

 steadily gone on altering and varying until to-day, and is, of 

 course, still in progress, in both the vegetable and animal worlds. 



