84 THE PLANT WORLD 



plants witli yellowish leaves in place of the rich dark foliage that I 

 remember. The rose-colored wild azalea or swamp honey-suckle has 

 become rare, and the great bird's-foot violet is very rare now in this 

 locality, although I remember its growing in sheets of blue on the 

 sandy hillside, thirty years ago. The same story is true of the ferns 

 here — they are sent to the New York market. We think the Goths 

 and Huns barbarians to destroy the art treasures of Rome, but we are 

 more barbarous toward our beautiful native trees and plants." 



The agents invoked by the Plant Protection Society to prevent this 

 wholesale destruction are : 



Legislation, such as protects the Hartford trailing fern. 



Moral suasion — articles in papers and magazines, explaining tlie 

 dangers which threaten our native flora, and calling upon people not to 

 buy certain species. 



Education, which goes more deeply into the subject, and endeavors 

 to teach both children and adults, by lectures, lessons and talks, the 

 beauty and worth of our native flora, the duty of preserving it and the 

 best way to enjoy it. Can we not persuade those who go out to gather 

 flowers that a few blossoms showing the graceful outline and contrast- 

 ing leaves are really more pleasing to the eye than a great crowded 

 bunch? Surely, after all these decades of Japanese art, Ave ought to 

 have a generation growing up that has learned to appreciate the beauty 

 of a single spray, be it rose, bamboo or pine, and the eye thus trained 

 will soon learn that those able to go to see the flowers in their natural 

 surroundings will care but little for a bunch in a vase. For the pleas- 

 ure of those unable to ramble in wood or meadow let us bring home a 

 few of the beauties — moss, grass, sedge, fungus, fern and flower, and 

 arrange them as far as possible to imitate their natural surroundings — 

 yet what columbine in a vase begins to compare with the graceful 

 beauty of a columbine nodding on a rocky ledge ? 



I once read * a pleasant account of a place a friend visited in the 

 country where the jjrofusion of blossoming wild plants pressing up close 

 to the house and garden filled her with amazement — thick beds of vio- 

 lets and wild pink in the spring — ranks on ranks of cardinal flowers and 

 gentians in the fall, and other flowers in their season between. " How 

 do you manage to have so many ?" my friend exclaimed. " It is the 

 children," replied the mother. " I have taught them to love the flowers 

 as they grow — to i)rotect and care for them, and not think they must be 

 always plucking them ; it requires some resolution not to gather a flower, 



* S.Minns. Rights Due to Wild Flowers. " The Little Unity." Aug. 1,1882. 

 (The same in "The Cheerful Letter," July, 1898.) 



