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 "Plant-lore 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.
THE DAISY.
I 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 their notice. 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)—
"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 Europe (Globularia). The name has been also given to a few other plants, but none of them are true Daisies.
