nt in "notes of travel." The custom is said
to be a popular degeneration of the celebration of the Resurrection.

* * * * *

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.

It is much rarer to find the wood-sorrel trefoil with a fourth leaflet
than it is to find the clover trefoil so provided. The two plants
belong to families widely separated from one another. The ancient
architectural decoration of trefoil carving, and also the heraldic
shamrock in the arms of the United Kingdom, represent the leaf of the
wood-sorrel, and not that of the clover. No doubt there has