324 POPULAR GEOGRAPHY OF PLANTS. 



feel in the society of old friends, when we know we can 

 enjoy it at leisure ; and acknowledge that whilst we have 

 been making grand acquaintances in foreign lands, we 

 may have seemed neglectful of the treasures which lay at 

 our feet. 



New things we little thought of too, we have to learn of 

 their history, or rather old things wonderfully old, though 

 new to us. For learned men who read the earth we live 

 on, as other men read books, have lately interpreted some 

 interesting pages, which tell strange tales about the ancestry 

 of our flowers, and prove their origin to be so remote, that 

 the human race itself, compared with them, is modern. 



And .other things as strange, if not more strange than 

 this, they tell ; about how their ancestors passed over dry 

 land to England and Scotland and Ireland, from France 

 and Germany and other lands (some even boast a Spanish 

 origin) ; and how, after several colonies of them had settled 

 in different parts, the land broke up and left them on an 

 island. Since which time a remarkable exclusiveness has 

 been observed by most of the families of different origin ; 

 so that the French flowers have kept to their own circle, 

 and but seldom, if ever, mix up with the Spanish ones ; 

 and, in the same way, the Scandinavian families have always 



