RELIGION IN THE PLANT WORLD 
A a a RE SR ET AE SEE EES RE EE EE I 5 IE I SI TTI LE EEE SLE IE SEED 
has cited them to prove a final resurrection for 
the souls of men; the reincarnationists have 
claimed in them a great evidence of the rein- 
carnation of the soul; the atheist has tried to 
show through them the validity of his belief; 
hero and conqueror have found in them their 
crowns of glory and the poet has made them the 
theme of his pen. Yet the flowers bloom today 
much as they did on the hillsides of Greece 
and Babylon, and man, with all his century- 
accumulated wisdom, seems but to have seen 
the outer edge of their real lives. 
The superstitious veneration of various 
flowers is an ancient and peculiarly charming 
expression of man’s innate appreciation of the 
beautiful. He who condemns as idolaters the 
flower-worshippers of ancient ages may well 
look upon himself with critical eyes. Which is 
the better: to pay tribute to the Creator through 
the adoration of his beautiful floral children 
or make cold, glittering gold the ultimate 
though unacknowledged goal of this earthly 
lifer 
It is interesting to notice, in reviewing the 
annals of flower-worship, that the most fervent 
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