STATi) POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 9I 



Violets have been brought from ahnost every country even 

 Patagonia. The market affords a perfume called violet, but it is 

 never distilled from this flower. It never separates its odor from 

 itself. Perfumers use the root of the Iris of Florence, which 

 gives a slight violet odor. But the perfume of the violet you 

 never get except from the flower itself. 



There is no country without roses, from Sweden to the coasts 

 of Africa, from Kamtschatka to Bengal, or on the mountains of 

 Mexico ; the rose flourishes in all climates and in all soils. What 

 is the use of them ? We call them luxuries, yet they are within 

 the reach of almost every one. Even in any large cities they are 

 brought from fields, lanes, woods, gardens and green houses. 

 Sometimes the sidewalks are almost lined with men, women and 

 children calling to the hurrying throng, "mayflowers, roses, vio- 

 lets, three cents a bunch, two for five." 



Flowers are used to express love, sympathy, condolence, 

 remembrance and farewell. We send them into hospitals, 

 prisons, jails and dungeons. Flowering plants and vines are in 

 most of our schoolrooms as a refining influence. Do we not 

 always believe in the man or woman, be they ever so bad, who 

 loves flowers ? We are sure there is something in them to appeal 

 to. ''Visit a children's hospital and see how the little sufferers 

 turn their pale faces to the flowers as the flowers turn their faces 

 to the sun." 



It was once a seven days' wonder when Trinity church in Bos- 

 ton furnished $500 worth of flowers for Easter Sunday, and a 

 still greater marvel when Phillips Brooks, with his own hands, 

 gave them every one to the mission children to be carried to their 

 homes in the slums. Have we a sick friend? Straightway 

 we send a bunch of flowers, and unless one has been a "shut in" 

 and unexpectedly had a cluster of fresh, fragrant and graceful 

 flowers brought at a time of hopeless depression and physical 

 weakness, he can never know the sympathy and cheer which 

 comes with them. 



Think what a bunch of buttercups can be to a young person 

 slowly dying of a hopeless disease, who knows his days are num- 

 bered, whose future is the "great beyond." The common flowers 

 represent to him his whole past life, bringing sunshine in their 

 color and memories of long sunny afternoons in meadows and 

 fields, besides the feeling of being tenderly remembered in the 



