Preface. 



THE love of flowers is one of the earliest of passions, as it is 

 one of the most enduring. Children with the bees and butter- 

 flies delight in the opening of the spring ; and a bright boy that 

 is reared in the country follows the season by its flowers. He 

 it is that knows when to push aside the snow and dried leaves 

 to find the first sweet blossoms of the trailing arbutus ; nor 

 does he mistake the dell where the white violet peeps shyly out 

 for the spreading patch of blue violets to which he returns 

 every year. He knows the hillside where the mountain laurel 

 and the lambkill grow, and drives away the foolish cows that 

 would eat of their fresh, green shoots. The precious haunt of 

 the pink orchis and the rocky crag over which droops the lovely 

 columbine is to him an unravelled mystery. A stream of fish- 

 ing he marks by the stately cardinal flower or the coy jewel- 

 weed. 



His knowledge of them all is intimate and loving one that he 

 has acquired by his own skill and observation, and through this 

 close friendship with them he feels proudly that they are his 

 very own. The swamps and the woods, the hills and the road- 

 sides, are his especial domain. 



The great poets of America have shown a profound apprecia- 

 tion of their incomparable wild flowers. In fact, the impersonal 

 love of flowers is one of the characteristics of modern poetry. 

 But this has not always been so. The Persians made use of 

 their flowers as mouthpieces to express their own sentiments 

 and from them the idea radiated very generally. They served 

 the ancient Greeks mostly as tombstones to commemorate their 

 sorrows : and although the Greek boy knew where to find them 

 and honoured them as favourites of his gods, he had not the 



