lb":/. ] 
THE LILY or THE VALLEY. 
67 
bells, each bell beautifully vandyked with six points. I have generally found it 
growing wild not far from running water, as an undergrowth, with the arms and 
foliage of some venerable oak as a parasol over its head, literally a Lily in the 
Valley, with rocks and hills piled around ; and if the heart of oak had a tongue, 
or if these big stones and crags could speak, they would tell us that this plant 
was never intended by nature to do battle with the sun and wind single-handed. 
The great service which the Lily of the Valley renders to horticulture is as a 
forced flower. Everybody knows the flower, for we see it in the button-hole of 
the gentleman’s dress-coat, and in the bouquet of the bride adorned for her 
husband ; and it is so easily forwarded, being a spring flbwer, that it is to be had 
in January, and right on till it flowers naturally in May. I need not speak of 
its ordinary culture, if culture of any kind it ever gets, but I will ask the gentle 
reader to turn to Nature’s page, and see how this plant behaves itself in its native 
habitat, and, for the reasons already given, to take that lesson. I have stated 
that the plant is a native of Britain, but I will go into particulars, and select a 
central locality, and ask the excursionist to take the Midland Railway train to 
Cromford Bridge, near Matlock Bath, in Derbyshire, and in that truly picturesque 
dell he will And the Lily of the Valley luxuriating. If he chances to be there in May, 
he may see children with bunches of its lovely blossoms offering them to the visitors 
and invalids for a few coppers. As he looks up to the rooks, piled mountains high 
around him, he will see that shelter, shade, and moisture are ingr.edients in the 
landscape where the Lily of the Valley is located by nature ; but the chief 
ingredients are the vegetable mould from the decayed leaves, and the moisture; 
and when under artiflcial culture, if it is neglected and allowed to get once 
thoroughly dry during its growing season, that hard surface drying will be 
quite sufficient to ruin a season’s blooming. As the plant skims the surface and 
does not feed deeply, it is essential to its well-being that very rich food should 
be put in its way, such as heavy drenchings with manure water, to imitate as far 
as possible the wet vegetable mould of its native vales. In the woods near 
Sheffield, north and south of that town, the common Squill may be seen in 
bloom by the acre; and it throws all spring flower-gardening into the shade 
when one sees a flower-bed of lovely blue, a furlong or more in width, and half 
a mile long, lighted up by the descending rays of the evening sun. And when we 
pry into the mystery of its support, it all turns on the four or five inches of 
black vegetable mould that had once been leaves. But you cannot get such a 
glimpse as this of the Oonvallaria, although it is a plant exceedingly resembling 
the Squill* {Scilld), because it is seldom seen where the ground is even, and the 
length and breadth of its foliage combine to hide its slender spikes of flower. 
* I would fain enter my protest against the unnatural position in which the Oonvallaria is classed in 
the natural arrangement. The head of the family, Smilax, has little in common with its congeners. I would 
not have it aspire to be one of the Lilies, although it is as white as they. I would rather group it 
with its lovely companions of the grove, the Scilla above alluded to, the fragrant Hyacinth, and the wild 
Allium. I should be contented to see my tiny pet among the rank and file of this family, a gentle, lovely 
Asphodel. 
