1892.] ESSAYS. 153 



be found in one locality within our city limits. I cannot but 

 think it would thrive, if transplanted to Elm Park, where its roots 

 might always be in or very close to the water. The Rhodora 

 too, I miss at that place.* The ground savin, tliough a nuisance 

 in our hillside pastures, is really a most beautiful hardy ever- 

 green plant, and it should be a genuine delight upon the lawn of 

 a city dweller in winter time. 



" But," many persons say, " why all this noise about the lily 

 and the rose. Our interest lies not in delights for the eye and 

 the nostril, we must eat and drink, and have clothes to wear." 

 On this point they should read what Dean Hole has to say in his 

 delightful " Book about Roses," concerning the working men of 

 Nottingham. 



At its beginning botany means the violet, the buttercup, and 

 the dandelion ; a little way along it branches and leads off to 

 two designations, the highest in art, and the highest in economics. 

 Average people are not touched by the examples of Turner and 

 Reynolds, Millet and Delacroix, who may have been led to the 

 grandest realms of the beautiful by the early contemplation of 

 some simple natural form — but we ought to make some of them 

 understand tiiat what we know of plants, means finally, what we 

 know of wheat and potatoes, the orange and the grape, of 

 cotton, and flax, and silk ; that upon plants we depend for our 

 welfare in this world and our salvation in the next. Nothing is 

 of more importance. Every college, agricultural and otherwise, 

 is establishing professorships in botany, every government shows 

 the deepest interest in the subject, and every citizen should help 

 along the cause in such degree as lie has ability. Let the single 

 fact that Australia has, for a number of years, made a standing 

 offer of thousands of dollars for a method of destroying the 

 rust of wheat, silence those who are crying for something with 

 money in it. The Worcester Natural History Society and the 

 Worcester Horticultural Society have for a long time done 

 good work in this field. Let us interest the cliildren in plants. 



*Yet it is there, though not in affluence. E. W. L. 



