330 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY GENTLEMAN, August 24, 1858 
are little buds, whose outer coats are membranaceous scales, 
the outermost always seated with its back to the main axis, 
and which enclose the rudiments of perfect, three-lobed 
1 eaves. In the axils of the scales above these are the solitary 
peduncles. In the axil, however, of the last, and sometimes 
of the last but one, there seems at first to be no peduncle, 
but, on close examination, the rudiments of a flower appear 
under the guise of a little bud borne by a stem, frequently not 
half a line long, in which traces of the different organs of the 
blossom are discernible. This flower is, however, frequently 
; developed in all its parts, and it is then plain that the upper¬ 
most scale does not stand more than half way up the portion 
of the main axis, which is clothed with peduncles. 
Close above the uppermost peduncle, or its rudiment, and 
not in the axil which the last scale forms with the peduncle, 
but on the other side of it, are the still undeveloped leaves, 
whose lobes are rolled in, smooth and naked on the inner, 
but clothed with long silky hairs on the outer surface. The 
highest scale encloses these leaves, yet not with the middle of 
its disc, but with its two margins, which extend beyond the 
last peduncle, since the lowest leaf alternates with the highest 
scale. In the axil of the lowest new leaf there is often a per¬ 
fect blossom on a long peduncle ; but this blossom often re¬ 
mains in a rudimentary state, or is completely abortive. The 
leaves are perfectly developed after flowering, and in summer, 
1 or still more plainly in autumn, we find the scales again at 
the top of the main axis, and the above-described lateral buds 
and peduncles in their axils, all compressed into a thick knob. 
The structures of a new cycle of vegetation begin here with 
the scales, and close with the new leaves ; and these are all 
on one and the same axis. The peduncles are axillary. The 
new main bud, which towards the end of the summer is quite 
formed, is terminal in the centre of the leaves. 
A. Uepatica agrees, in the arrangement of the parts, with 
Convallaria majalis , in which the lateral peduncle is sur¬ 
rounded by imperfect leaves, and rises from its point of origin 
at the moment when the leaves burst forth.—(Horticultural 
Society’s Journal.) 
LILIES OF THE FIELD. 
We are favoured with another extract from a letter winch 
has been received from Abdallah Asmar, the Maronite physi¬ 
cian, about the Lilies of the Field, which, as in a recent 
number, we again give in his own w T ords : — 
“As to the red Lilies I told you of, I was misinformed by 
some shepherds. I asked them to bring me some roots, which 
they did. I planted them here, and some are in flower, but 
not red ; some petals of the corolla are reddish-blue, others 
are azure. If you wish the sort, I send them you.” 
[This is the last account from Abdallah Asmar. These 
shepherds of the Lebanon must have a traditional idea of 
what the Lily of the Field was ; and, if I mistake not, I read 
somewhere, that Sir E. Smith was of their opinion ; for he, too, 
believed that this reddish-blue and azure Lily w r as the one 
referred to in the Sermon on the Mount, provided the Lily in 
question is the Ixiolirion montanum, the only Lily in all 
Syria, which comes nearest Abdallah’s quaint description. 
Ixiolirion montanum , or the Amaryllis montana of Redoute, 
grows as abundantly in that part of Syria as the Blue 
Bells, or wild Hyacinths, do in our own country. Colonel 
Chesney found it in Palestine, in the most brilliant profusion, 
and it has not been discovered anywhere out of Syria. Whereas, 
the Lilium Chalcedonicum, or scarlet Martagon, the last Lily 
which science has elevated to the distinction of being the Lily 
of the Field, is growing wild in every country from Galilee to 
Greece. But we cannot determine whether it is really a true 
native of any particular place in the whole distance. Like the 
Potato, it may have overrun the countries of the old world, 
throng ]i being so gay, as the Potato has for its usefulnes. It may 
have been a stranger in Galilee, at the time of our Saviour, al¬ 
though it appears to have been as wild then as at the present day. 
II ut the blue Lily, the Ixiolirion montanum , has never been 
out. ol that part of Syria. Dr. Lindley, on the authority of 
' lr .°" n Bowring, then Dr. Bowring, jumped to the con- 
j elusion that the scarlet Martagon was the Lily of the Field, 
I becau8e tll &t traveller happened to pass through the country 
| When ilie Martagon was in bloom. If he had happened to be 
a month earlier, or a month later, he would have seen dif¬ 
ferent Lilies in bloom, and the blue Ixia-like Lily, Ixiolirion , ; 
would be one of them. All that scientific investigation can 
make out to satisfaction, on this question, is, that the white 
Lily, Lilium canclidum , was not the Lily of the Scriptures, 
because the white Lily has not been found hitherto in the 
Holy Land, south of the Lebanon. But, supposing the 
merchants and pilgrims, who have brought the supposed holy 
Lily from the valleys on the way to Jerusalem to our cor¬ 
respondent, Abdallah Asmar, to have been more success¬ 
ful than the European naturalists and travellers, who botanised 
the country from Dan to Beersheba ten times over, and suc¬ 
ceeded in establishing the fact that the white Lily grows wild 
in those valleys, that would not settle the question, that the 
white Lily was in reality the Lily of the Field. It would be 
just as easy to make out and settle, that the white Lily was in¬ 
troduced to Jerusalem from the country of the Maronites, to 
King Solomon, along with the timber from the same country, 
to build the temple with, that it outlived history in those 
highlands, after escaping from cultivation ; but that, down on 
the plains of Galilee and Samaria, the climate was too hot for 
it to survive without cultivation ;—on the supposition that it 
found its way from Jerusalem to the low country, and, there¬ 
fore, that it could not possibly be know r n to the bulk of the 
congregation on the Mount. Plain common sense will make 
the question as obvious to the common worldly, as scientifi c 
research can ever make it to the rest of mankind. Then the 
most obvious, and plain common sense is this, that no particular 
Lily was meant at all; that in those times, and down to the days 
of Linnseus, the “ Lilies of the Field ” was the common phrase 
for all bulbous plants; and that science itself did not till then 
go farther than to say Lilio narcissus to all such bulbs. In 
the Holy Land, as in many other places where a hot, dry 
season scorches the vegetation, and is succeeded by the “ later 
rain,” or a rainy season, the bulbous plants are the first to 
cover the earth with flowers; the annuals come next; the 
herbaceous plants are the last to bloom. Therefore, the whole 
plain of Galilee, and on to Samaria, and stiff farther, to the 
river Kishon, where Elijah killed the prophets of Baal, the j 
bulbs are the spring flowers, the Lilies of the Field. They 
made the greatest impression, and they were w r ell known to 
everyone who listened to the Sermon on the Mount. The 
same kind of expression, as I have just said, came down, in 
one form or another, to the days of Linnseus. The Lili- 
astrums were the Lilies of the Field. The Lilio asphodels , 
the Lilio fritillarias, the Lilio hyacynthus, and the Lilio nar¬ 
cissus , w r ould make up all the spring flowers of Samaria, and 
“ Solomon, in all his glory, was not arrayed like one of these.” 
The Ixiolirion montanum , the Blue Bells of the Holy 
Land, Mr. Beaton adds, once, and only once, flowered in 
England : he had the opportunity of seeing it in bloom, about 
the middle of May 0 It is a slender-growing plant, very much 
like the growth of a long-leafed Ixia. The outer sepals, or 
what represents the calyx, have a dull metallic tinge, such as 
that on the blue branching Larkspur,—reddish blue is by no ; 
means a bad way of expressing the tinge, which leads one to ! 
believe that Ixiolirion montanum is the kind referred to. It j 
would, indeed, be a very desirable plant for a spring flower 
with us, and would need the same treatment as border or bed 
Hyacinths, but w r ould require a lighter soil, such as would do 
for Gladiolus.] 
ON THE SLAUGHTER OF QUEEN BEES. 
A slight observer of bees knows, that, after the swarming 
season is past, the drones, or males, are destroyed by the 
workers. But it is only the curious who understand how 
the supernumerary queens are slaughtered,—an event which 
I have noticed generally happens after the old queen has 
left the hive with the first swarm, leaving the embryos of 
several young queens in their cells. The enmity between 
queen bees causes the first-hatched ones to attack the other 
ones in the cells. The bees, however, defend these, and 
the head queen in a rage quits the hive with part of the bees, 
which makes a second swarm. The same process goes on 
until the next swarm, but often with more uproar in the hive, 
owing to several queens esoaping from their cells at once. But 
only one is suffered to remain in the hive ; the head queen 
in the swarm is sure to destroy the rest as soon as the bees 
