(II)

(12)

No man inveigh against the withered flower,
But chide rough winter that the flower hath kill'd ;
Not that devour'd, but that which doth devour,
Is worthy blame.

Lucrece (1254).

For never-resting time leads summer on

To hideous winter, and confounds him there;
Sap check'd with frost and lusty leaves quite gone,
Beauty o'ersnow'd, and bareness everywhere;
Then, were not summer's distillation left,

A liquid prisoner pent in walls of glass,
Beauty's effect with beauty were bereft,
Nor it, nor no remembrance what it was;
But flowers distill'd, though they with winter meet,
Leese but their show; their substance still lives sweet.'

Sonnet v.

With this beautiful description of the winter-life of hardy perennial plants, I may well close the "Plant-lore and Garden-craft of Shakespeare." The subject has stretched to a much greater extent than I at all anticipated when I commenced it, but this only shows how large and interesting a task I undertook, for I can truly say that my difficulty has been in the necessity for condensing my matter, which I soon found might be made to cover a much larger space than I have given to it; for my object was in no case to give an exhaustive account of the flowers, but only to give such an account of each plant as might illustrate its special use by Shakespeare.

Having often quoted my favourite authority in gardening matters, old "John Parkinson, Apothecary, of London," I will again make use of him to help me to say my last words: "Herein I have spent my time, pains, and charge, which, if well accepted, I shall think well employed. And thus I have finished this work, and have furnished it with whatsoever could bring delight to those that take pleasure in those things, which how well or ill done I must abide every one's censure; the judicious and courteous I only respect; and so Farewell."

"Flowers depart

To see their mother-root, when they have blown ;
Where they together,

All the hard weather

Dead to the world, keep house unknown."

G. HERBERT, The Flower.

APPENDIX I.

THE DAISY:

ITS HISTORY, POETRY, AND BOTANY.

There's a Daisy.-Ophelia.

Daisies smel-lesse, yet most quaint.

Two Noble Kinsmen, Introd. song.

The following Paper on the Daisy was written for the Bath Natural History and Antiquarian Field Club, and read at their meeting, January 14th, 1874. It was then published in "The Garden," and a few copies were reprinted for private circulation. I now publish it as an Appendix to the Plantlore of Shakespeare," with very few alterations from its original form, preferring thus to reprint it in extenso than to make an abstract of it for the illustration of Shakespeare's Daisies.

ALMOST feel that I ought to apologize to the Field Club for asking them to listen to a paper on so small a subject as the Daisy. But, indeed, I have selected that subject because I think it is one especially suited to a Naturalists' Field Club. The members of such a club, as I think, should take notice of everything. Nothing should be beneath It should be their province to note a multitude of little facts unnoticed by others; they should be "minute philosophers," and they might almost take as their motto the wise words which Milton put into the mouth of Adam, after he had been instructed to "be lowlie wise" (especially in the study of the endless wonders of sea, and earth, and sky that surrounded him)—

their notice.

"To know

That which before us lies in daily life,

Is the prime wisdom."-Paradise Lost, viii. (192).

I do not apologize for the lowness and humbleness of my subject, but, with "no delay of preface" (Milton), I take you at once to it. In speaking of the Daisy, I mean to confine myself to the Daisy, commonly so-called, merely reminding you that there are also the Great or Ox-eye, or Moon Daisy (Chrysanthemum leucanthemum), the Michaelmas Daisy (Aster), and the Blue Daisy of the South of