PREFACE 



Surely a foreword of explanation is called for from one who 

 has the temerity to offer a surfeited public still another hook on 

 wild tlowers. Inasmuch as science has proved that almost every 

 blossom in the world is everything it is because of its necessity to 

 attract insect friends or to repel its foes — its form, mechanism, 

 color, markings, odor, time of opening and closing, and its season 

 of blooming being the result of natural selection by that special 

 insect upon which each depends more or less absolutely for help 

 in perpetuating its species — it seems fully time that the vitally im- 

 portant and interesting relationship existing between our common 

 wild flowers and their winged benefactors should be presented in 

 a popular book. 



Is it enough to know merely the name of the flower you meet 

 in the meadow ? The blossom has an inner meaning, hopes 

 and fears that inspire its brief existence, a scheme of salvation for 

 its species in the struggle for survival that it has been slowly per- 

 fecting with some insect's help through the ages. It is not a pas- 

 sive thing to be admired by human eyes, nor does it waste its 

 sweetness on the desert air. It is a sentient being, impelled to act 

 intelligently through the same strong desires that animate us, and 

 endowed with certain powers differing only in degree, but not 

 in kind, from those of the animal creation. Desire ever creates 

 form. 



Do you doubt it ? Then study the mechanism of one of our 

 common orchids or milkweeds that are adjusted with such mar- 

 vellous delicacy to the length of a bee's tongue or of a butterfly's 

 leg ; learn why so many tlowers have sticky calices or protective 

 hairs; why the skunk cabbage, purple trillium, and carrion flower 

 emit a fetid odor while other flowers, especially the white or pale 

 yellow night bloomers, charm with their delicious breath; see if 

 you cannot discover why the immigrant daisy already whitens our 

 fields with descendants as numerous as the sands of the seashore, 

 whereas you may tramp a whole day without finding a single 

 native ladies' slipper. What of the sundew that not only catches 

 insects, but secretes gastric juice to digest them ? What of the 

 bladderwort, in whose inflated traps tiny crustaceans are impris- 

 oned, or the pitcher-plant, that makes soup of its guests ? Why 

 are gnats and flies seen about certain flowers, bees, butterflies, 



