And who does not remember Herrick’s quaint but beautiful verses, beginning:
“Fair daffodils, we weep to see
You haste away so soon.”
Or Spenser’s equally charming description of Cymoënt with her companions playing by a pond, and
“Gathering sweete daffadillyes, to have made
Gay girlonds from the sun their forheads fayr to shade.”
The name sometimes given them of “Lent Lilies” is peculiar to places where they flower; in colder countries, where it would have no significance, the name is unknown.
Like every other growing thing, the daffodil has much about it worthy of notice. It deals in sixes; six lobes to the corolla, and six pollen stamens, but a three-lobed ovary, and only one seed-leaf.
The wild daffodil has little scent, but being, like the majority of spring flowers, of a bright yellow colour, it is easily seen by the day-flying insects, on whose visits it depends for fertilisation, while some of its near relatives, which are chiefly visited by night moths, are white and strongly scented, in order to be conspicuous even in the darkness.
At this time of year, when the more hardy birds are beginning to return to our shores, as well as in autumn when they are migrating, a great number of our songsters are killed annually by flying against telegraph wires.