An early Easter falls little in advance of St. Patrick's Day, when there is much "wearing of the green" and questioning as to what plant is "the real shamrock." This matter has become so involved and developed by wild enthusiasm, ignorance, and false sentiment that it is difficult to deal with it. A distinguished Irishman once showed me the "shamrock" he was wearing in his buttonhole as "the true" plant of that name. He assured me that he had studied the subject from boyhood and knew well the true and the false. "What is its flower like?" I asked him. "It never has a flower at all," he said. Another injustice to Ireland, one must suppose, or a miracle of St. Patrick's! His "green" was a bit of the small variety of the common clover, _Trifolium repens_, which, of course, produces the usual tuft of florets or clover-head. It is true that this plant has now been vulgarly substituted for St. Patrick's shamrock. The shamrock is not really the common clover nor any variety of it. The common Dutch clover and its varieties were introduced into Ireland two hundred years ago from England and are not Irish at all! The true shamrock is the delicate little wood-sorrel, _Oxalis acetosella_, which has a beautifully formed three-split or trefoil leaf of the most vivid green colour, and a white flower like that of a geranium. It is called "fairy-bell" by the Welsh, and was believed to ring chimes for the elfin folk. It was also greatly esteemed for its acid flavour and for various reputed medicinal and magical properties by the Druids and among the early inhabitants of Great Britain and Ireland. Pliny says it never shelters a snake, and is an antidote to the poison of serpents and scorpions--a good reason for its association with St. Patrick! It had already a reputation and sanctity when, if tradition be true, St. Patrick used its threefold leaf to symbolise the doctrine of the Trinity.