128 FLOWERS OF THE FIELD AND FOREST. 



THE only representative of our peculiarly rich Southern flora 

 which adorns our pages is the White Bay, represented so finely 

 in our plate. It is a large shrub, blooming resplendent in the 

 everglades of Florida and the rich semi-tropical forests of Georgia. 

 Mr. Sprague has reproduced the beauty and elegance of the 

 flower so faithfully that I need not attempt a further description 

 of it in words. 



The genus was named for Dr. Gordon, an old-time botanist 

 of Aberdeen, Scotland. It belongs to the order of the Camellias, 

 and is first cousin to the tea plant whose fragrant decoction daily 

 " cheers but does not inebriate " the whole civilized world. 



If my readers will look with a little care at the leaves on 

 the plant, as the artist has pictured them, they will see that they 

 are not arranged one directly above the other, nor one opposite 

 the other, but, in what appears at first sight, a disorderly fashion 

 about the stem. It will be worth while, I trust, to look a little 

 into what is suggested by this fact, and see if there be a law 

 or system in the arrangement of the leaves of plants. This 

 matter has been the subject of no little study on the part of 

 botanists and other scientific people, and here, as elsewhere in na- 

 ture it has been found that the rule is not accident or chaos, but 

 law and order. 



" All nature is but art unknown to thee, 



All chance, direction which thou canst not see, 



All discord, harmony not understood." 



But we are learning to know nature's art, and to understand 

 the deeper harmonies hidden in her apparent discords. 



Dr. Gray says the leaves are symmetrically arranged upon the 

 stem, and that their position determines that of the buds and 



