transitions are a contrast to our modern uniformity. Our soul storms go on wholly within the soul. A comparison of these differences would, no doubt, be thoroughly worth while, but equally obviously it demands certain efforts of the imagination to make it significant. Those who attempt it have clearly not realised the need for that effort. They deprecate deeds of violence and are puzzled by extravagant piety. They fill their work with phrases like 'deplorable excesses or the mystical and unbalanced flights of superstition.' One may well know of the occurrence of brutal deeds without having one's imagination kindled by them. At this moment I daresay some shifty youth is lobbing a bomb on to a Belfast tramcar and several Russian babies are being destroyed by their hopeless mothers. Intellectually I am aware of this; but I should not attempt to write about it, for I know that it has not touched my imagination, and I could not therefore make it significant. My silence is surely justified, but how can one justify the men who describe the amenities of a mediæval sack as ' deplorable'?

The pitiful lameness of the adjective does nothing to re-create the burning town; one picture only does it outline, the picture of an old man, with twitching face, who sends his compliments to the Junior Dean because a party of undergraduates are making a noise under his window. And that old man is so lacking in imagination as to have the impertinence to attempt a description of a scene in which real noise, real blood, real passion, were present. How different it is when a historian paints any dramatic scene. Much has been written about the trials that followed the Labourers' Revolt in 1830, but until the Hammonds turned to them they had remained dead. The spectacle of certain west country labourers condemned to death for trifling offences committed in ignorance, and then having their sentences changed to transportation, prefaced by the spectacle of some of their fellows hanging in the dawn, would certainly be mentioned by every writer. Imagine what most would say, and compare it with this passage from the Hammonds' book:

This was the last vision of English justice that each labourer carried to his distant and dreaded servitude, a scene that would never fade from his mind. There was much that England had not taught him. She had not taught him that the rich owed a duty to the poor, that society owed any shelter to the freedom or the property of the weak, that the mere labourer had a share in the State, or a right to be considered in its laws, or that it mattered to his rulers in what wretchedness he lived or in what wretchedness he died. But one lesson she had taught him with such savage power that his simple memory would not forget it, and if ever in an exile's gilding dreams he thought with longing of his boyhood's famine-haunted home, that inexorable dawn would break again before his shrinking eyes and he would thank God for the wide wastes of the illimitable sea.

Such a passage would instantly, scornfully and not wholly without justice be dismissed by professional historians as rhetoric. Their objection would be twofold. First, they consider a dramatic, imaginative presentation of history out of date and contemptible. Secondly, they believe such an incident as the above should be treated as a legal problem, otherwise it is superficial. Their method would be to examine the laws that made possible this treatment of the labourers, and trace how those laws came to be altered. Such a method is of course justifiable, but when it claims to be less superficial than any other, its supporters betray their lack of proportion.

Which brings one back to the original contention only humanists can write history. The historian needs all the qualities of the artist, subordinated to a certain humorous, man-of-theworld air. Cranks and pedants alike fail. Never has there been more material waiting; if it once began to be handled by humanists, laymen would at once begin to read history. This would bring criticism into the field, and the whole tone of historical writing would become more cultured and healthy. No art can be left to specialists for a hundred years without losing sanity.

A. RYAN.

GOLD OF THE MEADOWS

AMONG many apparently trifling memories brought away from the Great War, while much that seemed of more import has faded, is a scrap of conversation with an artist I met while a patient in hospital. He asked me if I had noticed the stimulating effect of yellow. He said he always experienced a sensation of powerful uplift when confronted with the masses in which Nature so frequently handles it.

I had not thought of it in that light, nor can I explain why this particular portion of the spectrum should appeal so powerfully to the human mind, but the fact is obvious. Whether it be in the mundane form of oranges in a grocer's shop, gleaming sands by the sea-shore, or vast sweeps of golden light in the western sky, the eye always seems impelled to turn towards yellow with pleasure. It may be that, standing midway in the colour scale, the eye is more readily adapted to it, and, since the range of colour perception differs considerably in various animals, the position may also account for its prevalence in flowers, as appealing to a greater variety of insect eyes.

In the realm of flora, yellow is very persistent, and, especially in the early part of the year, confronts one at every turn, from the flowering of jasmine on cottage walls to the full glory of buttercups in the meadows, or gorse on the moors. In the woodlands, too, yellow still draws the eye irresistibly, and amongst a tangled mass of orchis and anemone, bugle and hyacinth, the primroses never permit themselves to be outshone.

Hence, it is small wonder that the buttercup, king of yellow flowers, should appeal so strongly to the child, and even draw from the utilitarian farmer, who counts it-justly enoughthe most plaguey weed of the pasture, grudging acknowledgment of its beauty.

Like many other common things, buttercups are so familiar that their presence is accepted by most people without any curiosity being roused concerning them. The poets have done little more than praise their rich colour in passing, and such information as tradition has handed down concerning their properties has been, perhaps, a little more than usually wide of the truth. That there

should be no less than 160 distinct species of the typical genus, fifteen of which are included in the comparatively limited British flora, is probably unsuspected by folk other than professed botanists.

In botanical books it is usual to give the alternative name of 'crowfoot' as an English synonym for 'buttercup,' and the dictionaries extend the term to the whole of the order Ranunculaceæ, which comprises, not only the buttercups, but the clematises, anemones, and hellebores. The term refers to the form of the leaves, which, in most plants of the order, are deeply incised and very suggestive of a bird's foot. As in the case of many other plants with such strongly divided leaves, they often vary greatly in a given species, and even on the same plant. A very prominent characteristic of Ranunculus, in particular, is the extraordinary difference between the leaves growing direct from the root and those which spring from the flower stem, for, while the former are broad and the incisions numerous, the upper leaves are usually reduced to very linear form, making the trifid arrangement which so strongly suggests a crow's foot. The extreme of this dimorphic form is seen in the so-called Batrachian ranunculi, which are purely aquatic plants. In these most of the leaves are entirely submerged. In this situation the broad, flattened leaf is of little use, and the form which the lower leaves assume is that of a large collection of threads, suggesting an expanded brush, through which the water circulates. In some cases, broad, and almost entire, leaves are produced on the upper portion of the plant and lie flat on the surface of the water.

Though the plants of the order are numerous, and the form of the flowers is extremely variable, there are many other features which make it easier for popular observation to link them together than is the case in other orders. It is not easy for the layman to associate together such apparently dissimilar plants as the silver weed and the rose, much less the hawthorn or apple with the meadow-sweet, but in Ranunculaceae there is only one genus of plants, Clematis, whose growth is of shrubby nature, all the others being herbaceous. At first sight, such plants as larkspur and anemone may appear very dissimilar, but points of resemblance in habit of growth and foliage are readily perceived. Even the forms of fruit, follicular in Delphinium and achenous in Ranunculus, are linked together in the genus Caltha, or marsh marigold, in which, though the flower is of typical buttercup form, the seeds are contained in a follicle differing little from that of the larkspurs.

All the plants of the order are notorious for the acridity of their juices, and in many the toxin is very potent. In most people's minds the name hellebore is inextricably associated with deadly poison, while aconite is a plant the roots of which have frequently

been eaten by human beings and animals with fatal effect. In the buttercups there is no species which proves deadly under normal conditions, but the acridity is almost universal, and experiments with the concentrated juice of several species have shown it to be fatal to animals if taken in any but most moderate quantities.

This poisonous character is obviously the great protective feature of the buttercups, for without it they would, from their herbaceous and foliaceous character, be very largely consumed by the larger animals, whereas, in spite of the old belief, which still lingers in the popular mind, that buttercups are the source of the yellow colour of butter, they are very carefully avoided by mammals. Indeed, it is now fairly well known to the agriculturist that the only stock ordinarily kept on the farm which will have anything to do with these plants are geese, who root them up almost eagerly. There seems little doubt that this is not a mere fortuitous circumstance, for buttercups are essentially marshgrowers, and no species of the genus seems to thrive under arid conditions, although, amongst such a large collection of species, it is only natural that the habitat varies considerably.

The buttercup being, in popular observation, associated mainly with the rich meadow lands, one finds the three species which are responsible for the gorgeous display spread forth in spring and summer, the best starting point for a survey of the genus Ranunculus. Though commonly confounded together, these three species are remarkably distinct when their habit and structure are compared, and scarcely a more illuminating lesson in the futility of superficial observation could be afforded, than a study of the three plants pulled up in full blossom and placed side by side. These three are Ranunculus bulbosus, the bulbous buttercup, Ranunculus repens, the creeping buttercup, and Ranunculus acris, the acrid buttercup, or, as it is sometimes styled in books, the upright meadow crowfoot.

The bulbous buttercup is certainly the most typical, as well as the finest, of the three, its colour being deep yellow-gold of unsurpassed richness, while the cup-shaped form of the flower is perfect, owing to the overlapping of the petals and their firm upward curve. The foliage is particularly vigorous, the radical leaves being broad and much divided. Those on the stem are very varied and often show a regular transition between the broad form and one which is quite linear. When circumstances permit a single plant to grow unhindered by crowding grasses, this buttercup makes a fine specimen, often attaining a height and diameter of 2 feet, the flowers, which are generally numerous, being then markedly larger. Apart from this vigorous growth, the characters which separate it clearly from the creeping buttercup are the swelling at the base of the stem, which gives it its name, and the