Summer Meeting, 33 



tient, self-sacrificing spirit; one willing to make great effort for 

 the reward of a beautiful garden. To love flowers and hate weeds 

 is the natural attitude of the successful florist toward beauty and 

 that which mars it. A gentle poet of the olden time, one who so 

 devotedly loved a garden that he wrote a long poem about it, says : 



"All hate the rank society of weeds, 



Noisome, and ever greedy to exhaust 

 The impoverished earth ; an overbearing race, 



That, like the multitude made mad, 

 Disturb good order, and degi-ade true worth." 



Life presents many and varied aspects; the contrasts found 

 both in the vegetable an animal worlds afford material for study 

 and much deep thinking. To trace the origin and history of a plant 

 might prove nearly as interesting as a study of the origin and 

 destiny of mankind. A strong analogy seems to exist between 

 plant and animal life; the evolution of the one seems quite as 

 marked as that of the other. Flowers and leaves even of the same 

 species have often distinguishing characteristics, differing from 

 each other and from their parents much as children do. Each 

 flowering plant has two parents, and, in order to propagate, its 

 kind must find a mate of the opposite sex. 



Too close relationship in the union of plants weakens and 

 degenerates the offspring, the same as in the races of animals; 

 hence, the strongest and best plants are those fertilized by pollen 

 borne by the wind, or carried on the rough coats of insects from 

 fields and forests miles distant. 



Every known plant and shrub, from the rose to the humblest 

 seedling, once grew wild somewhere. 



Many of our best known and most highly prized plants were 

 evolved by scientific cultivation from common weeds. 



It is a far cry from the huge, coarse, besotted wild Saxon to 

 the refinement of an English gentleman of this country. So it is 

 often difficult to recognize the rough progenitors of some of our 

 most lovely flowers, or to connect them, even remotely, with their 

 aristocratic offspring. 



The much-prized feathery chrysanthemum, almost worshipped 

 by the Japanese, is a composite flower derived from the common 

 garden chrysanthemum, the fever few and oxeye daisy. The fever 

 few is the offspring of the plebean road-side dog fennel. The 

 grandparents of our multi-colored pansies were purple, yellow and 

 white wild violets. The many-hued and charming China Asters, 

 we all like to cultivate, must trace their lineage back to the Field 



H— 3 



