84 
■ NATURE NOTES. 
then evening draws towards night. I came away sooner, with 
my friends. The last I saw of “ Garland Day ” at Abbotsbury 
was a waggonette full of children and bigger folk driving through 
the village on their way home, and soon after a little girl, very 
tired, trudging to her home — with her still more tired and tinier 
sister carried upon her back. 
That was yesterday. Isn’t it all very pretty and sweet and 
nice ? I am so glad to have been here for Garland Day. 
I am, dear Ettie, 
Your loving Uncle, 
W. 
BROWNING’S “THREE-LEAVED BELL.” 
|R. BERDOE, the author of the Browning Cyclopedia, sent 
to the press a surprisingly small number of “ difficult 
1 problems which neither [his] friends nor such books 
as [he] possessed could explain to [his] satisfaction.” 
Dr. Berdoe must be singularly unfortunate, both in his friends 
and his library, if he could learn from neither of them the story 
of the procession of Cimabue’s Madonna “through old streets 
named afresh from the event ” — the Borgo Allegri of Florence. 
His ignorance of Ouida’s stories is more pardonable, perhaps 
even meritorious, though he would find the “ cue-owls” — another 
of his problems — explained by a letter in Frescoes'. 
cicala boom, the maize stalks rustle, the chin hoot.’ 
But one of the problems relates to a flower : — 
“ I hear the 
A tliree-leavecl bell, 
^Yhich whitens at the heart ere noon, 
And ails till evening gives it to her gales 
To clear away, with such forgotten things 
As are an eyesore to the morn ; this brings 
Him to their mind, and bears his very name. 
The solution suggested, and accepted by Dr. Berdoe, is that 
the plant “ is the Day Lily, sometimes called St. Bruno’s Lily, 
an alpine plant, commonly called in Yia-nce Belle-de-jour, in botany 
known as Hemerocallis.” Now there never was a more striking 
instance of “ two single gentlemen rolled into one ” than is pre- 
sented by this sentence. The Day Lily is one thing, St. Bruno’s 
Lily another. The former is the Heinerocallis, but the “ alpine 
plant” belongs to the latter; the former, from its frequent occur- 
rence in gardens and its early fading, is very likely to be called 
Belle-de-jour, although that name is more usually applied to the 
blue convolvulus (C. tricolor). 
The St. Bruno’s Lily (Paradisia Liliastrum), however, is 
certainly not intended, for that has a szT-leaved bell, and could 
not become whiter than it is. The plant meant by the poet is 
