NEWS OF SPRING 

 essential thought of the universe, which perhaps betrays itself 

 in those ardent moments wherein it strives to please other 

 beings, to beguile other lives and to create beauty. . . . 



7 

 Old-fashioned flowers, I said. I was wrong; for they 

 are not so old. When we study their history and investigate 

 their pedigrees, we learn with surprise that most of them, down 

 to the simplest and commonest, are newcomers, freedmen, 

 exiles, upstarts, visitors, foreigners. Any botanical treatise 

 will reveal their origins. The Tulip, for instance (remember 

 La Bruyere's ^'Solitary,'' ''Oriental," "Agate" and "Cloth of 

 Gold"), came from Constantinople in the sixteenth century. 

 The Buttercup, the Moonwort, or Honesty, the Caltrop, the 

 Balsam, the Fuchsia, the African Marigold, or Tagetes 

 Erecta, the Rose Campion, or Lychnis Coronaria, the Varie- 

 gated Wolf's-bane, the Amarantus Caudatus, or Love-lies- 

 bleeding, the Hollyhock and the Campanula Pyramidalis 

 arrived at about the same time from the Indies, Mexico, 

 Persia, Syria or Italy. The Pansy appears in 1613; the Yel- 

 low Alyssum in 1710; the Scarlet Flax in 1819; the Purple 

 Scabious in 1629; the Chinese Saxifrage in 1771 ; the Long- 



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