THE GIFTS OF AUGUST 25 



major, probably the most plentiful of the small 

 ground orchids of Southern Australia. 



You are my own, of my own folk, you little blue flower of 

 the Spring. 



Is there, one wonders, something especially human 

 which endears us to wild flowers of a blue color? 

 Mr. Hudson (most widely-read of British contem- 

 porary nature- writers) replies in the affirmative. 



"The blue flower," he says, "is associated, con- 

 sciously or not, with the human blue eye; and, as 

 the floral blue is in all or nearly all instances pure 

 and beautiful, it is like the most beautiful human 

 eye. This association, and not the color itself, 

 strikes me as the true cause of the superior attrac- 

 tion which the blue flower has for most of us." 



If this theory were applied to the orchid alone it 

 would be rendered additionally strong by considera- 

 tion of the eye-like construction of the flower. Look- 

 ing at blue flowers by and large, however, it seems 

 to me that their attraction for us has little of the 

 directly human appeal of blue eyes, but rests in the 

 peaceful purity of the color and its affinity with fair 

 weather. Accepting Mr. Hudson's suggestion, we 

 would have to find commensurate beauty in flowers, 

 or even leaves, of a warm brown for who can deny 

 the charm of brown eyes? but we do not do so. 

 The little blue and white orchid, then, as a wide- 

 spread harbinger of blue and white days, may be 

 ranked among the typical wild flowers of the 

 Southern Spring. 



In a somewhat lesser degree, these remarks apply 

 also to the graceful sarsaparilla, so-called (Harden- 

 bergia) , which now festoons young saplings and old 



