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This flower takes its name from narkos or narxy; an inertia and languid drowsiness and the ancients believed that its scent induced a heaviness in the head. It is not so absurd as Mr Winkelmann *) believes, when Phurnutus and Eustathius see this derivation as a reason why this flower was sacrificed to the furies. Due to the furies enveloping the culprits in a torpor and, in truth, many things happening during the sacrifices cannot be explained in any other way. The poets tell us, that Narcissus, son of Cephisus and of the nymph Liriope, was a youth of exquisite beauty. That, when once he had come to the a spring to drink from it; he spied his beautiful likeness in the water and had become so enamoured with it that he wasted away from sorrow and longing and was metamorphosed into a flower of the same name.

Mr Miller lists in his Gardeners Dictionary 46 varieties of the flower, among which the following are of particular note.

The common pale daffodil, or the incomparable primrose.

The great, yellow Spanish daffodil with a long corolla tube.

The great, incomparable daffodil.

The small, yellow Spanish daffodil.

Common, yellow daffodil with double flower.

The filled Nonpareil, with partly yellow, partly saffron-coloured tepals

The Nonpareil daffodil with strongly doubled flower. Its larger tepals are white, the small mixed-in-ones, however, of a gold colour.

Nonpareil, with strongly doubled flower, the larger tepals here are pale coloured, which are admixed with smaller, yellow ones.

Daffodil with broad-leaved tepals, with strongly doubled flower in which some tepals are yellow, but the others green. [in Lat. Section: Tradescant's narcissus]

Double English daffodil.

The broad-leaved daffodil with sulphur-coloured flower and a short corolla tube.

The broad-leaved, sulphur-coloured daffodil. Its short, gold-coloured corolla tube has a fringe around its rim.

The large, daffodil.

The large narbonic, late-flowering daffodil.

The large, white oriental daffodil, with yellow, bell-shaped corolla; commonly called "Bosselmann's daffodil".