50 THE AMERICAN BOTANIST 



are wont to advise us to "Love the lily and leave it on its 

 stalk." When the practical man of affairs desires to 

 turn his forest into a cornfield, he is rarely deterred by senti- 

 mental or esthetic considerations. When this is fully realized, 

 we shall cease to attempt the protection of the flowers along 

 the wayside by pretty talk about their loveliness and will get 

 busy on plans for acquiring as parks desirable bits of the land- 

 scape where the flowers can really be protected. Much, also, 

 may be done in inducing owners of woodlands to protect the 

 native vegetation therein until such time as the forest is needed 

 for something else, while species threatened with extinction 

 may be transplanted to protected areas. Nor is there any good 

 reason why the thousands of acres along the railroads' right- 

 of-way should not be preserved. The railroads practically 

 without exception hire cheap laborers to mow down multi- 

 tudes of lilies, phloxes, asters and other species that make a 

 trip through the region by daylight attractive, and then hire 

 high priced gardeners to decorate a few square feet about the 

 stations with these very same plants. To be sure the right- 

 of-way must be kept from being overgrown with vegetation, 

 but why not discriminate between the decorative flowering 

 plants and the weeds? Nobody mows down the same plants 

 at the stations. Doubtless every colony of beautiful flowers 

 along the railway will be preserved some day — if they are 

 not all killed off before our plant protectionists wake up. 



The plants of field and roadside cannot be adequately pro- 

 tected for the very good reason that in order to accomplish 

 this, not a majority of the ramblers, but all, must be converted. 

 So long as a single individual insists on picking the flowers, 

 it is of no avail for the other ninety-nine to refrain. All 

 children should be taught how to select flowers intelligently, 

 so that those that are past their prime may be left to reproduce 

 the species, but it is absurd to forbid picking entirely. The 

 writer remembers with some chagrin some thousands of grass 



