The quality of charm in color is most subtle; it is like the human attribute known as fascination, "whereof," says old Cotton Mather, "men have more Experience than Comprehension." Certainly some alliance of color with a form suited or wonted to it is necessary to produce a gratification of the senses. Thus in the leaves of plants every shade of green is pleasing; then why is there no charm in a green flower? The green of Mignonette bloom would scarcely be deemed beautiful were it not for our association of it with the delicious fragrance. White is the absence of color. In flowers a pure chalk-white, and a snow-white (which is bluish) is often found; but more frequently the white flower blushes a little, or is warmed with yellow, or has green veins. Where green runs into the petals of a white flower, its beauty hangs by a slender thread. If the green lines have any significance, as have the faint green checkerings of the Fritillary, which I have described elsewhere in this book, they add to its interest; but ordinarily they make the petals seem undeveloped. The Snowdrop bears the mark of one of the few tints of green which we like in white flowers; its "heart-shaped seal of green," sung by Rossetti, has been noted by many other poets. Tennyson wrote:-- "Pure as lines of green that streak the white Of the first Snowdrop's inner leaves." [Illustration: Spring Snowflake.] A cousin of the Snowdrop, is the "Spring Snowflake" or Leucojum, called also by New England country folk "High Snowdrop." It bears at the end of each snowy petal a tiny exact spot of green; and I think it must have been the flower sung by Leigh Hunt:-- "The nice-leaved lesser Lilies, Shading like detected light Their little green-tipt lamps of white." The illustration on page 234 shows the graceful growth of the flower and its exquisitely precise little green-dotted petals, but it has not caught its luminous whiteness, which seems almost of phosphorescent brightness in each little flower. The Star of Bethlehem is a plant in which the white and green of the leaf is curiously repeated in the flower. Gardeners seldom admit this flower now to their gardens, it so quickly crowds out everything else; it has become on Long Island nothing but a weed. The high-growing Star of Bethlehem is a pretty thing. A bed of it in my sister's garden is shown on page 237. It is curious that when all agree that green flowers have no beauty and scant charm, that a green flower should have been one of the best-loved flowers of my home garden. But this love does not come from any thought of the color or beauty of the flower, but from association. It was my mother's favorite, hence it is mine. It was her favorite because she loved its clear, pure, spicy fragrance. This ever present and ever welcome scent which pervades the entire garden if leaf or flower of the loved Ambrosia be crushed, is curious and characteristic, a true "ambrosiack odor," to use Ben Jonson's words.