538 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



pose. For weeks and months they were gathering nutriment and storing it 

 carefully in thickened roots, bulbs and tubers, and last fall everything was 

 ready for an early push in the spring, under the stimulus of a bit of glad 

 sunshine or a few drops of warm rain. 



They are models of thrift, these plants that give us our first flowers, and 

 each one contains a lesson interesting and instructive that will give us 

 pleasure and profit if we will but con it. During all the long winter every year 

 I am looking with delight to the early days in April, when I shall, no matter 

 how busy, steal a few hours and hunt for wild flowers in a piece of woods 

 that has been a dear spot to me for twenty-five years, but the area of which 

 has grown smaller and smaller under the relentless strokes of the timber 

 slaughterer. 



Some years I can only find time on Sunday afternoons to seek this enjoy- 

 ment, but it has to be an extraordinary sermon in the morning of such days 

 to be of equal value to me of the sermon preached in the woods during the 

 afternoon. 



The sweetest enjoyment can be given children by taking them into the 

 woods to hunt flowers when they are so rare that each new one found is a 

 treasure, and so delicate that the greatest of care is necessary to preserve it for 

 even a few hours. They should be taught the lesson concerning the cause of 

 this early springing into life, and the reason for the frailty of the delicate 

 blossoms, then the deduction is easily comprehended of how to preserve their 

 beauty for a long time. 



Don't make the mistake yourself, nor let the little ones, of grasping the 

 blossoms hurriedly with broken stems, and bunching them closely in the hand, 

 soon to wilt and lose all their beauty; but take a basket or pail along, and 

 carefully, with an old case-knife or garden trowel, take up the roots and bulbs, 

 and carry them home with the little earth and mold that adheres; place them 

 in a platter, or in flower-pots, and you can have miniature wild gardens that 

 will bloom for days and even weeks, with only the addition of a little water. 



The Harbinger of Spring, or pepper and salt as the children call it, Eri- 

 genia bulbosa, is about the first blossom we find in our rich woods, so small it 

 needs keen eyes to see it peeping out from under the leaves, and many times I 

 have trodden over it without catching sight of its little delicate blossoms. It 

 has a round tuber which supports the succulent stems and flowers. 



This little plant, although very modest and retiring in its habits, has very 

 aristocratic and " high-toned " relations. Celery, parsley, dill, fennel, cara- 

 way and coriander are all blood relations that scarcely recognize this quiet 

 bashful member of the family, but to me none of them is so attractive as the 

 Harbinger of Spring. 



The three-lobed Hepatica follows closely after the flower just mentioned, 

 and is attractive from its diversity as well as delicacy of color. Its range of 

 color is from a rich purple through the various tints to almost a white, and 

 often we find tints and shades of pink. There are other members of this 

 family that come a little later, the anemone, isopyrum and marsh marigold 

 come quickly following after, with their blossoms of pink, white and gold. 



The spring beauty, Claytonia Virginica, with all its delicacy, may well be 

 ashamed of some of its relatives, notably the purslane, a synonym of naughti- 

 ness: for who does not occasionally say, " as mean as pusley ? " The spring 

 beauty has a tuber deep down in the ground, and has two thick linear leaves, 

 from between which the flower-stalk containing a raceme of rose-colored 



