22 Cypripedia. 



superficial observer, are subjects which cannot fail to awaken interest and 

 admiration. 



Hear how eloquently a true lover of Nature discourses upon one of the 

 commonest flowers to be met with in the fields. Daisy means " day's eye," 

 because it opens when the sun rises, and shuts up and goes to sleep when 

 he sets. Oliver Wendell Holmes, in "The Autocrat of the Breakfast- 

 Table," looks with the eye of a philosopher and poet, as well as a naturalist, 

 upon the humble daisy, and describes it and its surroundings in the fol- 

 lowing beautiful words : — 



" You cannot go into a meadow, and pick up a daisy by the roots, with- 

 out breaking up a society of nice relations, and detecting a principle more 

 extensive and refined than mere gravitation. The handful of earth that 

 follows the tiny roots of the little flower is replete with social elements. 

 A little social circle has been formed around the germinating daisy. The 

 sunbeam and the dewdrop met there, and the soft summer breeze came 

 whispering through the tall grass to join the silent concert. The earth 

 took them to the daisy-gem, and all went to work to show that flower to 

 the sun. Each mingled in the honey of its influence, and they nursed the 

 ' wee canny thing ' with an aliment that made it grow ; and, when it lifted 

 up its eyes toward the sky, they wove a soft carpet of grass for its feet. 

 And the sun saw it through the green leaves, and smiled as he passed on. 

 By starlight and moonlight they worked on. And the daisy lifted up its 

 head; and one morning, while the sun was looking, it put on its silver dia- 

 dem, and showed its yellow petals to the stars : and it nodded to the 

 little birds that were swimming in the sky \ and all of them that had siher- 

 lined wings, and birds in black, gray, and quaker-brown, came, and querul- 

 some blue-bird and the courtesying yellow-bird came, and sang a corona- 

 tion of that daisy." George B. JFarrai, jun. 



Troy. 



