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Gleanings in Bee Culture 



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FLOWERS AND HUMANITY. 



BY JOHN H. LOVELL. 



[The following is the first of a very Interesting 

 series of articles on svibjects directly and indirectly 

 related to our industry. Mr. Lovell is a biologist, 

 botanist, and bee-keeper. For these reasons he is 

 in position to tell us some very interesting things 

 about flowers and bee.s— things that every practical 

 bee-keeper ought to know. We hope our readers 

 will give them a careful reading.— Ed.] 



During the last half-century we have been 

 learning, as never before in the history of 

 the human race, the great importance of 

 keeping in close contact with nature. Our 

 future health and prosperity depend upon 

 our love for the soil and its productions. 

 The Greek fable, which tells how the giant 

 Antfeus, while wrestling with Hercules, nev- 

 er failed to renew his strength whenever he 

 touched his mother earth, will always be true 

 of man both physically and morally. Of all 

 natural productions, there is none so well 

 adapted for maintaining an intimate com- 

 munion with nature as the cultivation and 

 study of flowers. Whoever plants a flower- 

 garden, benefits not only himself but his 

 whole village. If the human brain is the 

 most wonderful production of evolution, as 

 Hffickel asserts, flowers are the most beauti- 

 ful; and, says William Winter, the minis- 

 try of beauty is the important influence up- 

 on society that can never fail. 



There is a fascination about an old gar- 

 den, indeed, that few can resist. I am glad 

 that the first botanical garden in America, 

 which was planted by John Bartram, the 

 first American botanist, is still preserved as 

 a public park by the city of Philadelphia. 

 It contained a great variety of shrubs and 

 trees, as well as herbaceous plants, raised 

 from seeds and roots collected during his 

 numerous journeys, and received from his 

 European correspondents. There was a 

 greenhouse built by Bartram himself, over 

 the door of which were inscribed the lines: 



Slave to no sect, who takes no private road, 



But looks through nature up to nature's God. 



One of Bartram's correspondents was Pe- 

 ter Collinson, a London merchant who had 

 a choice garden, the pride of his life, at Mill 

 Hill, where he skillfully cultivated rare 

 species of plants received from the colonies. 

 In one of his letters to Bartram he exclaims, 

 " O Botany! dehghtfullest of all the sciences! 

 there is no end to thy gratifications." No 

 one who has not experienced it can realize 

 how intense is the enjoyment of watching 

 the blooming of plants. A short time be- 

 fore his death, Keats told his friend Severn 

 that he thought that his intensest pleasure 

 in life had been to watch the growth of 

 flowers. 



Among children the love of flowers is uni- 

 versal. Says one writer, "I think I never 

 knew a child that did not love flowers. 

 Many children are passionately fond of 

 theni, but I never knew a child indifferent 



to them." Children and flowers! Flowers 

 and children! Surely they are the two chief 

 sources of human happiness! Says Donald 

 G. Mitchell, "Flowers and children are of 

 near kin. I love to associate them, and to 

 win the children to a love of the flowers." 

 I know of a little lad to whom the succession 

 of flowers brings one of the chief joys of the 

 year. With what delight he watches for 

 each blossom in spring, and how eagerly he 

 tells of the treasure he has found! Here is 

 a pleasure that is free to all, and yet is greater 

 than any money can buy. When it is re- 

 membered that in many cities there rre 

 children who have never seen a dandelion 

 or a buttercup, the value of maintaining 

 flower-gardens in city squares and in every 

 available spot can not be overestimated. 

 Let us hope that the time will speedily 

 come when every child, both at home and 

 by means of the school-garden, will be taught 

 the fundamental facts of plant-life, not alone 

 for the practical advantages to be gained, 

 great as these are, but that they may have 

 through life a never-failing resource, in the 

 pursuit of which they can always find hap- 

 piness and contentment. 



But great as is the pleasure flowers bestow, 

 it is far from being the only benefit received 

 from them. Says Bok, "Nothing teaches 

 us so much in this world as flowers, if we 

 will only watch them, understand the mes- 

 sages they exhale, and profit by them. 

 Every lesson in life is taught by the flowers; 

 every message to the human heart is car- 

 ried in them." Nor is the time devoted by 

 the professional or laboring man to the in- 

 vestigation of flowers wasted, even from a 

 practical point of view. Charles Kingsley 

 has forcibly described the helpfulness of 

 such studies. 



"I know of few studies to compare with 

 natural history; with the search for the most 

 beautiful and curious productions of Nature 

 amid her loveliest scenery, and in her fresh- 

 est atmosphere. I have known again and 

 again workingmen who, in the midst of 

 smoky cities, have kept their bodies, their 

 minds, and their hearts healthy and pure by 

 going out into the country at odd hours and 

 making collections of fossils, plants, insects, 

 birds, or some other objects of natural his- 

 tory; and I doubt not that such will be the 

 case with some of my readers." 



"Supposing that any of you, learning a 

 little sound natural history, should abide 

 here in Britain to your life's end, and ob- 

 serve nothing but the hedge-row plants: he 

 would find that there is much more to be 

 seen in those mere hedge-row plants than he 

 fancies now. . . Sujipose that he learnt 

 something of this, but nothing of aught 

 else. Would he have gained no solid wis- 

 dom? He would be a stupider man than I 

 have a right to believe any of my readers to 

 be, if he had not gained thereby somewhat 

 of the most valuable of treasures, namely, 

 that inductive habit of mind; that power of 



