i4 SHAKESPEARE’S GARDEN 
beneath the shade of trees. After some considera¬ 
tion, we think the marsh marigold, kingcups, or 
horse-blobs, call it what you may, is the plant from 
which the cuckoo-buds of the poet is derived. As 
we have said, it is a conspicuous—nay, a wonderfully 
handsome—plant, with broad, glossy leaves and stately 
flowers of a rich golden colour, and is found through¬ 
out Arctic Europe, spreading into Asia and Africa. 
It is prone to variation, in accordance with the dry¬ 
ness or moisture of its situation. The only other 
British species is the Caltha radicans of Forster, a 
plant which Hooker says is now only known in 
cultivation. 
This month of April is with us a month of many 
perplexities. There is a flower mentioned in Venus 
and Adonis , line 1168 , as 
A purple flower sprung up, chequered with white, 
Resembling well his pale cheeks and the blood 
Which in round drops upon their whiteness stood. 
The legend is, of course, that of Adonis, son of 
Cinyras, King of Cyprus, with whom Venus became 
enamoured, thus arousing the jealousy of Mars, who 
accomplished the death of Adonis while hunting a 
wild boar. The unfortunate youth was, however, 
changed by Venus into a flower, the anemone, and 
his loss yearly bewailed. Ellacombe reasons ably 
that Shakespeare had the anemone in view when he 
wrote this passage, and no doubt scarlet anemones 
flecked with white could be seen in the gardens of 
his day; but Linnaeus, however, gave the name 
Adonis to another plant, a close ally of the anemone. 
There is a plant naturalized in Suffolk and the 
South of England representing the genus in our 
islands. This beautiful little flower—the Adonis 
autumnalis, L.—has graceful leaves very much divided, 
and of a bright green. It has also a scarlet flower, 
