March, in olden times was considered the beginning of the year. The Daffodil may, therefore, be considered the first flower of the new year; and it may well be regarded as the beginning of its strength. There is no flower that strikes you as so fresh and vigorous and full of life. It has the strength and symplicity of a Doric column. It rises straight from the ground with singleness of purpose and directness of aim. Round leaves speak of restfulness and fulfilled design, and belong to the later periods of the year; straight leaves, on the other hand, in their upright lines suggest alert progressive movement, and are appropriate to the quick, eager life of youthful spring. In the long, narrow leaves of the daffodil, that seem stem and foliage combined in one, as if nature in her haste had no time to separate them, there is nothing superfluous. They gird their green garments closely about their loins to do more effectually the work that is set before them in the brief season.

The color of the daffodil leaves is of a peculiar glaucous green; a color that speaks of fulness of life, and is more refreshing to the eye than any other. It somehow suggests, as Dr. Forbes Watson well said, the idea of water, the source of all living freshness and coolness; not water in a shallow, colorless pool, where there is not enough of it to body forth its own hue, but water in the blue-green state, as it exists in the calm reaches beyond the downward thrust of the foaming cascade falling into the great depths. There you see water in its most vivid coloring; shades of deep green that are in most perfect harmony with the vegetation on the banks of the pool to which it gives rise

by its baptism of refreshment, and the laughing foliage that overhangs it, and dips its sportive boughs into the white foam-wreaths.

The close association between water and the leaves of the daffodil, with their smooth, cool, vivid-green surfaces, and their fast-growing tissues full of sap, struck the poetic fancy of the ancients, and originated the myth of Narcissus, who was changed into a daffodil by being in love with his own image reflected in a stream; and to adapt slightly Wordsworth's exquisite comparison, beauty born of murmuring sound did pass into its face. It enables us to realize the far-reaching significance of such fables as the transformation into a laurel-the freshest, coolest, and most like water of any plant-of Daphne, the daughter of a nymph of the rivers chased by the sun-god Apollo into this shady inaccessible refuge. And all such myths were personifications of the power by which the water that is born of the rivers is changed by means of the light and heat of the sun into the varied forms of vegetable life. Ruskin puts the lilies into a class by themselves to which he gives the name of "Arethusa," regarding them as the quiet enduring moulds into which the lovely waters, of which the famous fountain is the representative, are changed by the vital breath. The amaryllids, of which the daffodils is one of the fairest members, are indeed the daughters of Arethusa. They grow in the neighborhood of water; they are often grown in water only, without any soil; they are the embodiments of its coolest and greenest depths in the pools. They seem to have got their abundant sap out of the storm-clouds that during the

late winter and early spring months distilled their moisture into their growing-places.

Usually the green leaves of plants are the first to appear, being of a simpler type and construction than the flowers which are afterwards awakened by the stronger power of the sun. The flower of the daffodil shoots up in company with its long, spear-like leaves marshalled around it to defend it from the cold winds of March; but it maintains the general characteristic of spring plants, which is to rise up at once straight from the root. This peculiarity is caused by the special dangers to which spring plants are exposed, from the changeableness and inclemency of the weather at that season. Nature, as Tennyson tells us, is more careful of the type than of the single life; and, therefore, spring plants, like the crocus, send up their flowers, which belong, not to the individual, but to the race; not to the vegetable plant that now is, but to the propagative system of the life that is to come, before their leaves or immediately from their root-so as to accomplish the most important purpose first-and to secure that, whatever happens to the individual plant, the flower, and fruit, and seed of the species of the coming race will be safely provided for. And how lovely is the contrast between the cool, shady leaves that stand sentinel around it, and the rich yellow of the blossom in the centre! We have in this flower of March the beautiful combination of winter and summer, of the rain-cloud and the sun-beam, of the warmth of the sun in its blossom and the coolness and freshness of the floods in its leaves; the whole plant being thus an expressive symbol of the two essential elements that help to make up its lovely life. Besides the legitimate petals of the flower, there is in the daffodil a corona or tube, which is a supplementary organ to protect the vital stamins and pistils, and to make the

blossom more attractive to the few insects that are about at this time, in order that they may fertilize it. The daffodils coming before the swallow dares, and taking the winds of March with beauty, require to work during the whole day and the lengthening eve, in order to secure the speedy perpetuation of the race; and therefore they are adorned with their brilliant hue, which is visible longer than any other color in the lengthening eves; and instead of being the emblem of forsakenness, as yellow is popularly supposed to be, it is made the emblem of attractiveness, drawing the eyes of insects and moths to the lilies, as our own eyes are attracted to the golden clouds in the west. The corona tube not only crowns the flower with its supreme beauty, but it is also the cause of its graceful drooping shape, the stamens and pistils are protected within it, as I have said, and at their foot is the store of nectar prevented by the bending figure of the flower from being dissolved by the dews or rains, which would speedily fill the tube if it were always erect, like a cup. Its corona and petals in this way act as a roof, sheltering the precious honey for the alluring of insects from the copious rains that usher in the spring; while the petals and sepals, spread out as they are on either side, act like wings to balance the weight of the blossom, and to keep it afloat in the air at the top of its long stem with a graceful ease. This is the utilitarian purpose of the droop in the blossom of the daffodil; but what a tender charm does it give to the flower, which is not yet so assured of its position that it can fearlessly lift up its face into blue skies, and frankly receive the beneficent gifts of heaven into its open goblet! And what a beautiful lesson does it give of the tender mercies that are over all God's works, as it thus bends its graceful neck in prayer and thankfulness to Him, not daring to

lift up its head. It was the dancing of the nodding daffodils in the spring breeze that made Wordsworth's heart dance within him with a youthful joy. But Herrick sees in this peculiarity of the flower only a means of superstitious divination:

When a daffodil I see,

Hanging down her head towards me, Guess I may what I must be; First, I shall decline my head, Secondly, I shall be dead,

Lastly, safely buriéd!

to

It was, indeed, a strange omen take from a provision of nature, intended for the very opposite purpose-to prolong and perpetuate the life of the plant. It was a prophecy of life, not of death. But in those days of figurative resemblances, the drooping of the head of the daffodil was supposed to picture the bending of the body by disease or weakness to the grave.

The droop of the daffodil is very different from that of the snowdrop. It is a gradual arching curve like a swan's neck; whereas that of the snowdrop is abrupt from an almost straight stalk, that bends only slightly to the weight of the flower. The blossom of the snowdrop, owing to this wise contrivance, has greater freedom to turn round on its stem, and to set its back against the more boisterous storms that prevail in February when the Fair Maids are out; whereas the weather later on is more settled, and the droop of the daffodil accommodates itself to it by a graceful curve without injury. This arching curve becomes more marked in double flowers, for, owing to the reversion of slender, thread-like stamens and pistils into broad, leaf-like petals, the stem has a heavier weight to carry; but being overdone by this heavier burden, much of the beauty and grace of the flower has been lost. No flower has been so frequently doubled as the daffodil. In old-fashioned gardens, all the flowers used to be of that charac

ter, and it was very rare to find anywhere a single flower. This came to be regarded as the natural habit of the plant, and it set the fashion. It was preferred for two reasons: because it presented a more showy appearance, larger flowers and more brilliant coloring; and, in the second place, this form was more lasting. By doubling a flower and so changing its seed-producing vessels into petals, you bring it more closely down to the condition of barren foliage, which, belonging to the individual, and not to the race, has a much longer term of existence. The flower

fades quickly because it is a flower, the instrument of perpetuating the racea quick means to a long end- and must speedily give way to the fruit and the seed; but the leaf that is kept as a leaf, endureth indefinitely. And yet what a sacrifice you make for the longer continuance of your double flower! You convert it into an artificial flower, that lacks all the fleeting charms of the single flower. How much lovelier is the single daffodil that is free to develop all its own parts in its own way! How exquisite is its frilled corona, which is not broken up into ragged, mop-like pieces! How fairy-like its petalled wings of a paler hue, which give it such a gladsome motion in the breeze! It is, indeed, the frail, perishing single daffodil that is the most beautiful. It is of the simple, and therefore fleeting wild-flower, and not of the double and more enduring garden form, that Herrick speaks SO pathetically; and his words are more beautiful because they have this pathos of perishableness.

Fair daffodils, we weep to see
You haste away so soon:
As yet the early rising sun
Has not attained its noon.

Stay, stay

Until the hastening day
Has run

But to the evening song,
And having prayed together, we
Will go with you along.

The blossom of the daffodil has a very singular feature, the significance of which is not commonly recognized. It springs directly from a brown membraneous spathe or sheath, looking like a bit of dry tissue-paper clinging closely to the base of the flower. It is like a grocer's twisted bag or the miniature hood of a Capuchin monk. It seems like a deformity, and you would almost wish to tear it off, and leave the lovely golden blossom to rise directly from its bare, fresh, green stem. But in that case much of its beauty would be destroyed and all its significance lost! This feature brings out more thoroughly the brightness of the yellow blossom against its shrivelled wrapping. death in life contrasts more strikingly with the fresh, living juiciness of the stem below and the floral growth above it. The eye appreciates all the more fully the brilliancy of the flower that has sprung out of this dry, mummified sheath, like the cerements of the dead. The decay that has overtaken this part of the plant, when it has reached its highest point, and is about to be crowned with its golden crown of life, reads to us the moral of the transitoriness of all life.

Its

But I see in this withered spathe hanging on the fair green neck of the flower a still more significant lesson, full of happy suggestion. Nature does not drop it as if it were a withered leaf; she persists in keeping it upon the stem, so that we may be duly impressed by it. Ordinary decay is at the extremity of things whose purpose is served. It indicates the end of their perfection. But the decay of this spathe is not at the end of the stem; for the stem goes beyond it to develop the blossom, and therefore it is only a step in the progress of the plant, only a stage in its unfolding. Why, it may be asked, does the sheath become dry and withered in the daffodil when it retains its fresh, green appearance in the snowdrop, and

continues on that plant unfaded till the flower dies? Is it not because the demands made upon the substance and strength of the snowdrop are not so great? Its blossom and the growth of its stem and leaves are so small that they economize their material and force in the formation of them, and therefore the spathe can preserve the freshness of the rest of the plant. But the needs of the daffodil, created by its long leaves and large blossoms, are so great that the spathe must have its green growth stopped, and must wither in order that the blossom may be formed by the sacrifice. It is the dying plant that flowers. Flowers appear at the end of stems where the vital force is far spent, and the substance for making new growth is almost exhausted. Therefore the plant blossoms at the end of the stem. But here in the sheath of the daffodil it rests a while, in order to accumulate fresh material and vital energy to complete the plant in its magnificent flower.

You notice that the withered membraneous spathe at the farthest leafy or vegetative stage of the daffodil is one of the same simple elementary type and mode of construction as the scales that cover the bulb, from which the leaves and blossoms at first sprang. The daffodil thus in its highest growth goes back to its lowest growth. It dies down to its origin in its most advanced growth, in order to rise again to higher effort and more glorious revelation of what is in it. In the dry, withered sheath we see the recoil or retrogression from the fullest development of foliage enabling the plant in the same way as an athlete takes a step back in order to leap over an obstacle, to produce the highest formation of all, the flower and fruit. Strange it is to see the lovely blossom, that delights the eye with its golden crown of beauty, springing out of the unsightly shroudlike spathe, pushing through and be