THE WORLD IN THE OPEN AIR. 
[The Rev. Edward J. Taylor, F.S.A., obligingly communi- 
cates to us the following poem by John Keble, taken from his 
“Commonplace Book,” but not included in any of the [printed 
collections of his poetical works.] 
Come, while in freshness and dew it lies. 
To the world that is under the free blue skies. 
Leave ye man’s home and forget his care ; 
There breathes no sigh on the dayspring’s air. 
Come to the woods, in whose mossy dells 
A light all made for the poet dwells ; 
A light colour’d softly by tender leaves, 
Whence the primrose a mellower glow receives. 
The stock-dove is there on the beechen tree, 
And the lulling tone of the honey-bee : 
And the voice of cool waters ’mid feathery fern 
Shedding sweet sounds from some hidden urn. 
There is life, there is youth, there is tameless mirth, 
Where the streams with the flowers they wear have birth. 
There’s peace where the Alders are whispering low : 
Come from man’s dwellings with all their woe. 
Yes — we will come — we will leave behind 
The homes and the sorrows of human kind. 
It is well to rove where the river leads 
It’s bright blue vein along sunny meads. 
THE POLLINATION OF THE PRIMROSE. 
By F. E. Weiss, D.Sc. 
T was with feelings of profound regret that I read the 
announcement of the death of the late Rev. Edward 
Bell, in the April number of this journal, at the end of 
an article on the Pollination of the Primrose. In his 
article he criticises some observations and remarks which I made 
upon this subject in the New Phytologist (June, 1903). A good 
many points in this criticism had been previously communicated 
to me by Mr. Bell, in the course of a friendly correspondence, 
in which he was good enough to lift the veil of anonymity as- 
sumed by him on account of ill-health, which made him dis- 
inclined to enter personally into the controversy, which he was 
fully aware his somewhat heterodox view on the subject of cross- 
fertilisation of flowers would arouse. If I venture in the present 
number of Nature Notes to reply to some of his criticisms, I 
