THE PLANT WORLD 97 



The Wild Flower Preservation Society 



of America. 



Mr. Charles L. P0L1.ARD will lecture on " Vanishing Wild Flowers " 

 in Springfield, Massachusetts, at 8 p. m., April 25, 1904, under the 

 auspices of the Botanical Club of that city. In May he will give a 

 lecture in the regular botanical course of the Brooklyn Institute. It is 

 expected that new local chapters of the Society will be organized in both 

 these cities. 



Our Secretary, who is now in Florida, sends this suggestive article 



from the field : 



EXTREMES MEET. 



The Secretary of the Wild Flower Preservation Society left New 

 York City with several inches of snow on the ground and two or three 

 feet of frozen soil beneath it : in twenty-four hours was seeing peach and 

 plum trees in bloom in Georgia, and within forty-eight hours reached 

 Miami, where the oleanders and roses were in full bloom, with the 

 temperature ranging as high as 85° ! Verily extremes do meet in this 

 land of ours, when railroads make such direct and rapid connections. 

 But uppermost in my mind during all those miles of journey through the 

 pine lands of Georgia and Florida has been the thought — Why should 

 people be ' ' frozen to death ' ' in the North while countless millions of 

 trees are being actually burned alive in the South in order to clear the 

 land for crops of various sorts ? In the Carolinasand Georgia it is cotton 

 that is the staple ; in Florida the crops that pay vary in diflferent regions. 

 The citrous fruits — oranges, lemons, grape-fruit, and limes — have yielded 

 from $4,000,000 to $5,000,000 this season; pine-apples, $2,500,000; 

 tomatoes, $3,000,000 ; and potatoes, beans, egg-plants, and peppers about 

 an equal amount. Nearly all these fruits and vegetables are eaten by 

 people who pay "fancy" prices for them, since they are luxuries, while 

 fuel is a necessity which even the ver}- poor can not do without. The 

 laws of supply and demand are such that the railroads make special rates 

 and provide special facilities for the transportation of these luxuries, 

 whereas wood, either as lumber or as fuel, can not be sent by rail, the 

 prices are so excessive, but must be shipped by water as "ballast" for 

 vessels. Some is used locally, being made into crates and baskets for 

 vegetables, but no one yet has realized the immense possibilities of these 

 southern forests as affording fuel for the Northern States. An old mill- 

 man has suggested that if the sawdust from the sawmills were to be com- 



