Azaleas whitest of white ! 



White as the drifted snow 

 Fresh-fallen out of the night, 



Before the coming glow 

 Tinges the morning light ; 



When the light is like the snow, 



White, 

 And the silence is like the light : 



Light, and silence, and snow, 

 All white ! 



White ! not a hint 

 Of the creamy tint 



A rose will hold, 



The whitest rose in its inmost fold; 

 Not a possible blush ; 

 White as an embodied hush ; 

 A very rapture of white; 

 A wedlock of silence and light ; 

 White, white as the wonder undefiled 

 Of Eve just wakened in Paradise ; 

 Nay, white as the angel of a child 

 That looks into God's own eyes ! 



Harriet McEwen Kimball. 



"Blue 



If blue is the favorite colour of bees, and if 

 bees have so much to do with the origin of flowers, 

 how is it that there are so few blue ones ! I believe 

 the explanation to be that all blue flowers have de- 

 scended from ancestors in which the flowers were 

 green ; or, to speak more precisely, in which the 

 leaves surrounding the stamens and pistil were green, 

 and that they have passed through stages of white 

 or yellow, and generally red, before becoming blue. 



Sir John Lubbock. 



