THE HEATHER IN AMERICA. 



But the desire to feel that America, as well as 

 the land of Burns, had a vested right to the famous 

 plant, was very strong, and there sprang up an un- 

 usual interest in the subject. Whittier's pretty lines 

 were felt to be real both in body as well as spirit : 



No more these simple flowers belong 



To Scottish name and lover, 

 Sown in the common soil of song, 



They bloom the wide world over. 



In smiles and tears, in sun and showers, 

 The minstrel and the Heather, 



The deathless singer, and the flowers 

 He sang of live forever. 



Wild heather bells and Robert Burns! 



The moorland flower and peasant ! 

 How, at their mention, memory turns 



Her pages old and pleasant. 



Quite a stir was created in the botanical world 

 when a plant of Calluna vulgaris, in a pot, was ex- 

 hibited by Mr. Jackson Dawson, then a young gard- 

 ener for Hovey, of Cambridge, Mass., and now su- 

 perintendent of the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard 

 University, at a show of the Massachusetts Horticul- 

 tural Society in Boston, on Saturday, July 13, 1861. 

 Mr. Dawson had discovered the Heather growing wild 

 near Tewksbury, Mass. So great was the enthusiasm 

 in the matter that the Society at once instituted an 

 investigation, and on August 5 of the same year its 



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