Twelve White Flowers. By Frances Livings and A. Livings. (Hamilton,
Adams, and Co.)—These " twelve white flowers " are the Double White Camellia, the Poet's Narcissus, Eucharis Grandi- flora, Marguerite, Lily of the Valley, Lapageria Alba, Rose Boule de Neige, White Japanese Anemone, Clematis, White Sweet Pea, Single White Azalea, and Christmas Rose. All, we need not say, have a certain beauty of their own, and some have a certain poetical interest attaching to them. The Narcissus, for instance, "has captivated the fancy of poets from the days of Ovid and Virgil downwards." The writer might have gone a good deal further back than Ovid and Virgil—(why this order, which is neither literary nor chronological ?)—and mentioned Sophocles, who introduces the Narcissus in his description of the grove at Colones, the " fair clustered Narcissus, ancient coronel of the mighty goddesses." The goddesses, by-the-way, are Demeter and Persephone, Persephone having been carried away as she was gathering a Narcissus. The Lily of the Valley also has poetical fame ; but it does not go back very far. Black Hellebore, commonly known as the Christmas Rose, has a much more ancient renown. Mrs. Livings might have made more, we think, of the literary associations of her subject; but as far as practical information is concerned, she is satisfactorily copious and exact. The twelve species are excellently pictured.
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