I knew them all, and the birds, too. It would 
seem like meeting so many friends then, when 
one went out for a ramble, instead of compara- 
tive strangers.” Like expression is often heard 
from people in middle life, who have not recog- 
nized their opportunity, and are now too busy to 
accept or to make one. For this there is some 
excuse. Science has made the way too hard. 
Insistence on scientific methods has often blocked 
the way to the simpler method of seeing, hearing 
and feeling, and thus learning the lesson that 
endears a world of beauty. 
“They love not the flower they pick, and know it not, 
And all their botany is Latin names.” 
Blue Vervain. 
During a tramp over the flat along the Shrews- 
bury, near Galilee, a little station on the beach 
a half mile north of Monmouth Beach, I quite 
unexpectedly stumbled upon a group of simplus 
joy, blue vervain. It was a charming bit of blue 
blossom, radiant with sky tints, and not a con- 
testant near for its unusual form and beauty. 
It was a suggestion of Willow Run, Pine Hills, 
where it grows more vigorous and abundant, but 
with no such beauty of flower. To represent to 
you the flower as I saw it growing there would 
be impossible. Most of my class are acquainted 
with it. Perhaps not just as I saw it growing 
on the Shrewsbury flats, but familiarly enough 
to recognize it wherever seen. The vervain is 
classed with medicinal herbs. Its genealogy is a 
35 
