MAGENTA TO PINK FLOWERS 



" Botany is a sequel of murder and a chronicle of the deadT 



— Julian Hawthorne. 



" A plant is not to be studied as an absolutely dead thing, but rather 

 as a sentient being. . . . To measure petals, to count stamens, to 

 describe pistils without reference to their functions, or the why and 

 wherefore of their existence, is to content one's self with husks in the 

 presence of a feast of fatness — to listen to the rattle of dry bones rather 

 thafi the heavenly harmonics of life. We have reason to be profoundly 

 thankful for the signs to be seen on every side, that the dreary stuff which 

 zvas called botany in the teaching of the past will soon cease to masquer- 

 ade in its stolen costume, and that our children and our children's 

 children will study ?iot dried speci^nens or drier books, but the living 

 things which Nature furnishes in such profusion. 



" The reason of this i-adical change is not far to seek. Since man 

 has learned that the universal brotherhood of life includes himself as the 

 highest link in the chain of organic creatioti, his interest in all things 

 that live and move and have a being has greatly increased. The move- 

 ments of the monad now appeal to him in a way that was impossible 

 under the old conceptions. He sees in each of the millions of living forms 

 with which the earth is teeming, the action of many of the laws which are 

 operating in himself ; and has learned that to a great extent his welfare 

 is dependent on these seemingly insignificant relations ; that in ways un- 

 dreamed of a century ago they affect huffian progress. ''' 



-Clarence Moores Weed. 



79 



