THE PIvANT WORLD 203 



flowers, among them thousands of the pink cypripedium, was ruined by a 

 portable saw-mill. This monster spread devastation far and wide. My 

 friend, a flower-worshiper, transplanted what she could, her cry being, 

 "Oh, if only I could buy up all that land !" That seems to be the only 

 way to preserve the wild flowers. 



* It is surprising that church decoration displays sometimes so little 

 " consideration " for the lily of the field ! The beautiful red lily of July, 

 for instance, growing at the roadside, is pulled by the hundred by ruth- 

 less hands, for the purpose of beautifying the church. Often the tiny 

 bulb is dragged out of its sheltering crevice, and so is lost to all the 

 summers to come. Picked thus, in great, tight bunches, and crowded 

 into vases for altars or communion tables, it can hardly glorify God nor 

 be enjoyed by man. 



This method of decoration is not only not " considering the lily," but 

 it is generally singularly unsatisfactory and ineffective. In fact, wild 

 flowers are not useful for decorative purposes ; they need, for their full 

 beauty, the background of solitude ; — one red lily, or two, or three, with 

 tall grass, or the greenness of briers and milkweed and scrub maples, 

 may be very beautiful and suggestive ; but in a mass the beauty and sug- 

 gestiveness is almost always lost. 



It is better, and far more effective, to use for church decoration a 

 large simple treatment of branches, or long lines of vines, with here and 

 there, perhaps, some deep, rich note of color such as garden flowers sup- 

 ply much better than the shy and single blossoms of the fields and woods. 

 The story is told of some one who had zeal, not according to knowledge, 

 who made a rope of crow-foot violets to decorate a pulpit, using of these 

 delicate and perfect creatures hundreds of single blossoms ! It was a 

 slaughter of the innocents ; and furthermore, it was entirely ineffective 

 as a decoration. 



This effort to protect our native wild flowers may well begin in the 

 church, taking as the text that we are to "^ consider the lily," — not in 

 large and meaningless bunches, not in the passing beauty of its violent 

 death through careless human hands, but we are to consider the lily of 

 the fields, how it grows ! Margaret Deland. 



Mr. J. W. T. Duvel has recently published (Bull. 58, Bureau of Plant 

 Industry, Dept. Agric.) a very valuable paper on the Vitality and Ger- 

 mination of Seeds, deduced from a series of experiments extending over 



* Reprint of Leaflet No. 8, Society for the Protection of Native Plants. 



