Narcissi are very various in their rate of increase, some free-growing sorts, such as _Emperor_ and _Empress_, _Sir Watkin_ and _Barri_ increase well; but others much more scantily and slowly. The polyanthus narcissi (N. Tazetta) do not in the main increase so well as most of the other kinds. The reason of this may be that they are none of them native to Western Europe, though they have been long grown and much improved there; their original home is South Europe and Western Asia, from whence it is thought they spread at some almost prehistoric time to Northern India, China, and Japan. One rather insignificant species has of recent years been introduced to Europe from Japan, and for the moment made a sensation among amateurs out of all proportion to its merits. There is a small kind very plentiful in Greece to-day; from its plentifulness some folk have decided it was the original flower of the Greek legend, but the consensus of opinion is in favour of a single-flowered one of the Poeticus family—also still to be found in abundance in Greece. Ovid’s description certainly best fits the latter, as will be seen from the following translation of his account of the flower and the metamorphosis of the boy.—He was but sixteen, according to Ovid, so his flight from the overtures of Echo and his subsequent astonishment at and passion for his own newly-discovered beauty are perhaps forgivable; at all events more forgivable than the admiration of many a subsequent poet Narcissus for himself and all his works.
Soon the rosy flush has left his cheek, and all his goodly strength is gone, and the very form that Echo once had loved. He lays his weary head on the green grass, and darkness covers his longing eyes. And now he has entered the halls of the dead, and in the Stygian wave still gazes on his own image. The Naiads, his sisters, with tresses torn, weep for their brother, the Dryads wail aloud, while Echo wails again. And now they make ready the pyre and the funeral torches and the bier. But in vain they seek the dead; they find but a flower of golden (croceum) hue, its heart enringed by (set round with) white leaves.[1]
[Footnote 1: I am indebted to Miss Camilla Jebb for this translation.]