MONOGRAPHS FOR AN AMATEUR GARDENER'S LIBRARY. 363 
portions, the seed sections of leaf, portions of corm tunic, &c. If 
there is a fault to be found, it lies in the overcrowding of the plates 
with these detached portions. It would have been better to have kept 
them to separate plates, leaving the portraits of each complete plant 
with a clear margin. 
Good as these portraits are, they do not flatter the plants except 
in two cases, Crocus ochroleucus and C. Malyi. It may be that Maw 
had finer forms of these two than are now in cultivation. Certainly 
I have never seen either species as large or handsome as in those 
plates. 
There have been earlier accounts of the Crocus, and I think very 
highly of Dean Herbert's " A History of the Species of Crocus," * 
published after his death in vol. ii. part iv. of the Journal of the 
Horticultural Society of London in 1847. 
Joseph Sabine's paper * on Crocuses grown in the garden of the 
Horticultural Society, read in 1829, and published in vol. vii. of the 
Transactions of the Horticultural Society, London, in 1830, is inter- 
esting, as he describes well many garden varieties of C. aureus, C. 
vernus, C. versicolor, and C. biflorus, some of which have been lost 
sight of since his day. 
John Ferdinand Hertodt's " Crocologia," published at Jena, 
1671, is a very curious book. Twenty-six forms of Crocus are described 
in the language of the period and are not easy to recognize. The main 
portion of this work of 283 pages is devoted to the uses in medicine 
of Saffron. According to Hertodt, it is the panacea for all ills, from 
hypochondria to toothache, taking arthritis and the plague on the 
way. It will cure madness and dye the hair yellow. Asthma and 
cataract fled before it. Of course, you must mix certain other things 
with it, and long prescriptions are given, including such potent drugs 
as opium, myrrh, henbane, and aloes. Certain maladies require the 
worm-eaten wood of oaks, earth-worms dried and powdered, fat of 
mountain mice or pounded swallows' nests. But in every prescription 
Saffron appears as the all-important ingredient. 
In the Order Liliaceae many families have been well monographed. 
At the head stands " A Monograph of the Genus Lilium," * by H. J. 
Elwes (1880, 10 guineas), a large folio, with forty-eight coloured 
plates drawn by Fitch. They are fine plates, bold in outline, and in 
some there is much play of light and shade ; yet I do not like them. 
The artist has a way of making a flower look artificial, as though 
made of painted calico and not of living sap-filled cells. I think it 
is due to the abrupt edges of the markings and masses of shade. As 
instances I call attention to the crimson horseshoes or pitchforks at 
the bases of the segments in Lilium monadelphum. They are so hard 
and sharp that they appear to have nothing to do with the flower. 
Or, again, the spots of L. Humboldtii. In my copy some of the yellow, 
white, and red paints have turned black. This is a pity, for the text is 
so authoritative and complete in information up to the date of publica- 
tion that it is worthy of better-coloured plates. 
