40 FIELD MEETING AT BRADFORD. 



worts, "starflowers" embracing all sunflowers as well, such 

 as Dahlias, Zinnias, Coreopsis, Asters, Tagetes, Calen- 

 dulas, etc., many of which are natives of North America 

 and are universally cultivated. Some species, however, 

 with which we are equally familiar are exotic and of great 

 known antiquity. Our Rudbeckia laciniata was found in 

 Canada and described by Cornuti in 1635. Calendula offic- 

 inalis from the south of Europe has been known and cul- 

 tivated in New England since the time of Josselyn in 1672. 

 Chrysanthemum Indicum, now so familiar as a greenhouse 

 plant, was figured in paintings and wrought into the royal 

 dress of the Chinese before the Christian era. Seeds of 

 Centaurea cyanus or blue bottle have been found in quan- 

 tity among the debris of the lake dwellings of Switzerland. 

 Artemisia absinthium or wormwood was employed in the 

 earliest times in the sacred rites of the Romans. That 

 great summarist of ancient botany as he has been called, 

 Pliny, who wrote early in the first century, describes in 

 his compilations, drawn, no one knows from how many 

 earlier sources, certain plants of this order, well under- 

 stood by us and easily traced out in his writings, such as 

 elecampane, yarrow, camomile, tansy, wormwood, mari- 

 gold, centaurea, chickory, burdock, and even "Bellis" the 

 true and humble daisy with which we began. 



Mr. Phippen closed his remarks which had largely re- 

 lated to the cultivation of the plants considered, in a few 

 rather disparaging comments on the popular tendency of 

 degrading the flower garden by geometrical beds of colored- 

 leaved plants now so much in vogue, a style good in 

 itself, as an architectural adjunct, but which of necessity 

 discards the immense versatility and beauty of the floral 

 creation. He made a plea for the return to our first love, 

 to the old-fashioned garden of our fathers, with its borders 

 of grand perennial plants and shrubs, such as roses, honey- 



