12 THE VOICES OF FLOWERS. 



of grass a conjunction or particle, a little word, which helps 

 to add interest to the whole : and the history of each, in its 

 efforts for life, forms a volume in the large library of flowers 

 and plants scattered from the equator even to the ice-bound 

 regions of the farthest North. 



Few are aware how widely spread throughout the world 

 are the plants and flowers, and some trees, the names of which 

 are so common, and which are mentioned even in the smallest 

 school-book on botany. Few consider what wanderers they 

 have been. The lily, the tulip, the walnut, the cherry, 

 the vine, with others, seem to have started into existence in 

 soils far east of Europe, and even of Syria.* Most of the 

 flowers and plants which add such beauty to European and 

 American gardens are products of the distant East, and 

 have been found growing spontaneously only near the plains 

 and mountains of Persia and the Caucasus. Perhaps, if we 

 could trace back the ancestry of many beautiful plants and 

 fruits, as we can that of families, we should be guided through 

 ages, and over distant seas and lands, until in our search we 

 should tread within the long-lost Eden, where was planted the 

 first garden, and where flowers first bloomed in beauty and 

 sent forth their fragrance and opened their bright colors to the 

 sun in the early and sinless childhood of creation. And when 

 our first parents made the first fruits the occasion of their 

 shame and exile, flowers and gentle plants not included in the 

 curse seemed in sympathy to wander out from Eden, going forth 

 on their joyful mission to deck the &quot;thistle and the thorn,&quot; 



* Michaux. 



