ioo mature Studies in Berftsbire. 



"The freight lines of our great railways cut no 

 figure whatever in comparison with the innumerable 

 companies organised for the carriage of pollen-dust 

 from flower to flower in the maintenance of plant 

 life. The Black & Gold Despatch Company, the 

 Wasps' Express Freight, the Moths' Night Line, are 

 two or three of the corporations (unlimited) which 

 transact the enormous business of moving a sum- 

 mer's crops of pollen. And when the season is over 

 and the harvest is gathered it is the habit of the rest- 

 less children of these flower communities to say 

 good-by to their homes and to the village in which 

 they have been born, and sally forth to found new 

 homes and new villages for themselves. To do this 

 they take their own private cars, run on the tracks 

 of the great Air-Line System, and by way of the 

 Great North-western, the East Wind Consolidated, 

 or the South-western Central, fly to new lands to 

 repeat the ventures of their progenitors. You may 

 see them next fall, when the thistle floats on the 

 breeze and the aster seeds start on their overland 

 journeys. Who can fail to perceive in this vast ma- 

 chinery of the flowers, this cooperation with the 

 bugs and the breezes, this intricate system of com- 

 munication and transportation, a foreshadowing of 

 all that the Vanderbilts and the Scotts and the Pull- 

 mans have done in human society ? 



"Now, to go back to the text, is not that handful 

 of flowers a wonderful prophecy ? Is it not a shadow 

 of things to come ? Does it not uncover the deep 



