WILD-FLOWERS IN ART AND NATURE.* THIS book, as its title
indicates, will interest students of Nature as well as students of Art, for the wild-flowers in its pages are treated botanically as well as artistically, with some amount of literary lore in addition. There are twenty-one coloured plates by H. G. Moon, each representing different wild-flowers designed as studies for water-colour painters, with a short botanical account of each flower by Mr. F. W. Burbidge, Curator of the University Botanical Gardens in Dublin, and with hints as to colouring and directions for painting supplied by Mr. Sparkes, Principal of the South Kensington National School of Art. The plates naturally vary in value as examples of the flowers portrayed. It is more difficult to reproduce satisfactorily by a mechanical process the tall growth of a foxglove, with its brilliant purple-pink " freckled bells," or the wild luxuriance and blue colouring of hyacinths and harebells, than it is to reproduce branches of wild-roses and boughs of hawthorn. Mr. (?), Moon's " Wild Rose " is a beautiful study, with its own leaves as a natural background showing up the delicately tinted petals. The dog-rose is one of the chief beauties of our native copses and hedgerows, and in its hardy, enterprising, fertile growth is a typical English flower. The letterpress belonging to the " Wild Dog-rose" has been somewhat care- lessly looked over, and the result reminds us of "English as she is spoke" in foreign parts. Alluding to the Rosa Spinosissi?na, the Scotch or Burnet rose (also familiarly called the "Burrow rose "), Mr. Burbidge says, "It is of dwarf and very spiny [sic], with small leaves similar to those of the herb ' Burnet,' whence its popular name of the Burnet Rose.' " The low growth and sweet smell of this rose recalls Trench's lines — " How thick the wild flowers blow about our foot, Thick-strewn and unregarded, which, if rare,, We should take note how beautiful they were, How delicately wrought, of scent how sweet."
The study of " Wood-Anemones " is very well drawn and grouped, all the better because it is a difficult flower to treat artistically. Poppies and irises and large ox-eye daisies, with their decided colouring and bolder outlines, are far easier to group than the " frail-leaf'd white anemony." Mr. Burbidge gives a pretty account of the less common purple variety,—A. Pulsatilla, known as the "Pasqua flower." He says :—" On Good Friday I went with a friend from Rouen to Les Andelays, a quaint little town on the frontier between Normandy and France, and on the high slopes on which the Chilteau Gaillard stands, there we found this plant in profusion, its rich flowers of royal purple and gold nestling amongst the grass and sweet-briar and juniper that grow there high up above the Seine. Further on the roadside towards Vernon we found the purple ' Pasqua' and the white wood-anemone growing together on the fringes of the open woods ; and again and again does the vivid pleasure of the sight come back to one's memory like a golden dream."
The hawthorn is another typical English flower that is well represented. Its very name of " May " reminds us of spring, when the fields are outlined by snowy hedgerows, and every- where are domes of sweet blossoms, or, as Mr. Burbidge has it, "white and fragrant flowers in corymbose clusters!' In the first glimpse that Tennyson gives us of Guinevere, she is riding with Sir Launcelot through fields and coverts in the "joyous spring," and she seems a part of the green and white world herself, riding on her cream-white mule, in her grass- green dress and tufted plume ; and in the last sad scene at Almesbury she remembers that innocent May time, when she "Rode under groves that look'd a paradise Of blossom."
Mr. Burbidge says that " from earliest times the hawthorn has been considered as one of the most lucky of trees to plant • Wild Bowan tilt Art and Nato% By 3. 0. L. Bparkos and P. W. Burbidge, F.L.S. With Oohs:trod Plates by B. G. Moon. London Edward, Arnold. near the dwelling-house and if tradition speaks truly, this tree furnished the wood for the fire on the altar of Hymen in Grecian times, as also for the torches carried by the wedding. guests." And he also quotes Ohaucer's lines :•-• "To fetche the flowers fresh, and branch and bloome • And namely hawthorn brought both page and groorne." Evelyn, speaking of the hawthorn in his Silva, says :—" It was accounted among the fortunate trees, and therefore used in Fasces Aruptiarum, since the jolly shepherds carried the White Thorn at the Rapine of the Sabines." But modern popular superstition seems to take a different view, as there is a widespread belief that boughs of May-blossom brought indoors will bring ill-luck to a house, and the month of May itself, when the tree is naturally in its greatest beauty, is counted an unlucky month for weddings. There are other beautiful varieties of the Orategus, such as the wild-service, and a species of bird-cherry or mespilus that the present writer believes is called the " Virginian cockspur thorn." Lt is equally decorative in the spring with its covering of white blossoms, and in the autumn with its flame-coloured leaves glowing among blue pine-trees or fading beech and chestnut. Space will not allow a notice of the other capital studies in this book, though the " Ox-eye Daisy," " Wild Heather," and " Red and White Campions " are too good to be passed over without a word of praise. We have seldom seen the actual colours of flowers so well copied in a mechanical process, and it is with pardonable patriotic pride we notice the legend on each plate, "Printed in England." Mr. Sparkes' directions for "washing in" backgrounds and hints as to colouring are as practically useful as anything short of a demonstration lesson can be. The type is clear, and the subjects are well chosen ; altogether, the collaborators are to be congratulated on having produced so useful as well as so ornamental a book.
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