A BIT OF USELESSNESS 113 



appreciation of its own beauties. There are ants 

 which spend most of their life making gardens, 

 knowing the uses of fertilizers, mulching, plant- 

 ing seeds, exercising patience, recognizing the 

 time of ripeness, and gathering the edible fruit. 

 But this is underground, and the ants are blind. 



There is a bird, however the bower bird of 

 Australia which appears to take real delight in 

 bright things, especially pebbles and flowers for 

 their own sake. Its little lean-to, or bower of 

 sticks, which has been built in our own Zoologi- 

 cal Park in New York City, is fronted by a 

 cleared space, which is usually mossy. To this 

 it brings its colorful treasures, sometimes a score 

 of bright star blossoms, which are renewed when 

 faded and replaced by others. All this has, prob- 

 ably, something to do with courtship, which 

 should inspire a sonnet. 



From the first pre-Egyptian who crudely 

 scratched a lotus on his dish of clay, down to 

 the jolly Feckenham men, the human race has 

 given to flowers something more than idle curi- 

 osity, something less than mere earnest of fruit 

 or berry. 



At twelve thousand feet I have seen one of 

 my Tibetans with nothing but a few shreds of 



