120 FLOWERS OF THE FIELD AND FOREST. 



Leaves are the Greek, flowers the Italian phase of the spirit ot 

 beauty that reveals itself through the Flora of the globe. 



"An exhaustive collection of leaves would form one of the 

 most attractive museums that could be gathered. It would be 

 a privilege that could not but unseal in some measure the dullest 

 eye, to look in one day over the whole scale of Nature's foliage-art, 

 from the feathery spray of the moss, to the tough texture of the 

 Amazon lily's stem that will float a burden of a hundred weight; 

 from the bristles of the pine-tree to the Ceylon palm-leaf that will 

 shelter a family with its shade. 



"Would it not astonish us with something like reverent .ad- 

 miration, if we could sweep the gradation of Nature's green as it is 

 distilled from arctic and temperate and tropic light, and varied by 

 some shade on every leaf that grows; if we could scan all the 

 textures of the drapery woven out of salts and water in botanic 

 looms, from the softest silk of the corn to the broad tissues of the 

 banana's stock ; if we could see displayed in wide masses all the 

 hues in which Autumn dyes the leaves of our own forests, as 

 though every square mile had been drenched in the aerial juices of 

 a gorgeous sunset ? And then when we should see how the general 

 geometry of the verdure is broken into countless patterns, we 

 should find our museum of leaves as engaging a school for the 

 education of the intellect as a collection of all vertebrae, or a rep- 

 resentative conservatory of the globe. 



" ./V careful and eloquent observer of Nature describes the leaf 

 as the sudden expansion of the stem that bore it ; an uncontrollable 

 expression of delight, on the part of the twig that Spring has 

 come, shown in a fountain-like expatiation of its tender green heart 

 into the air. And to hold this joy, Nature moulds the leaves as 



