Tulips grow wild along the northern shores of the Mediterranean, and in Africa and the Far East. They were introduced into the Low Countries in the sixteenth century from Constantinople and the Levant. Owing to their great beauty the flowers became immediate favorites in European gardens. It was in 1637 that the extraordinary tulipomania first took possession of the Dutch. Not only were flower merchants seized with it, but almost every citizen took up tulip growing. A single bulb called the “Semper Augustus” was sold for thirteen thousand florins, and for another of the same variety was traded “a new carriage, a pair of gray horses, and forty-six hundred guilders.” A prize of one hundred thousand florins offered by the horticultural society at Haarlem was won by the black tulip of Cornelius van Baerle. But when the government stepped in and enforced a law against gambling the price of tulips fell to nothing. The bubble burst, and thousands of dealers were beggared in a single night. There is an old Dutch proverb which says, “God made the sea; but we make the shore.” For hundreds of years the Hollanders have proved this true by literally making the land upon which they live. They must continually fight against the encroachment of the sea, and a big factor in the work of keeping the ocean out is done by great windmills, which pump the water from the fields into the rivers and canals, and thus drain the land. Everywhere in Holland windmills can be seen. Besides pumping and draining, they also saw wood and grind corn. Although nowadays steam and gasolene engines can do most of the work formerly performed by windmills, they still form a picturesque part of the Dutch landscape. By draining whole marshes they have transformed this waste land into beautiful green and fertile fields. In passing from The Hague to Haarlem on the train one can see the largest of these “polders,” as the drained marshes are called. Windmills were used as early as the twelfth century. In all the older windmills a shaft called the wind shaft carried four to six arms or whips, on which long, narrow sails were spread. The tips of the sails made a circle of sixty to eighty feet in diameter. It is this type of windmill, with its long arms waving above the landscape, that is associated so closely with Holland. [Illustration: RYKS MUSEUM, AMSTERDAM] _HOLLAND_ _Art in Holland_ SIX