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ter of deep regret if, in the years to come, the ‘‘ Mayflower” that 
welcomed the Pilgrims should live only in story and song 
This constantly increasing demand for the wild things from the 
country is one of the hopeful signs of the times. It should be 
met and met intelligently. A new industry, the raising of wild- 
flowers on their native soil will certainly arise in the near future. 
Wild flowers reach their culmination only under favorable condi- 
tions of heat and light, soil and water-supply, and some have 
fallen into the mycorhiza habit and are dependent on certain fungi 
inthe soil. Itis almost an tamer to imitate these conditions 
and bring them about artificially. an can do much, but he has 
yet to prove that he can ae as good a sand-dune or peat-bog 
or pine-forest or birchen-slope as Nature. 
With proper care, a patch of trailing arbutus might be made 
to yield quite a little annual income, and the same may be said 
of the Sadéatia, so familiar to the Plymouth tourist, the car- 
dinal-flower, the fringed gentian, the columbine, the white pond- 
lily, the sand violets (Viola pedata), and some of our more showy 
native orchids that have a gregarious tendency, such as the po- 
gonia, calopogon, arethusa and the lady’s slippers. From one 
spot in a peat-bog in Michigan, last June, eighteen hundred of 
the showy lady’s slippers (Cypripedium reginae) were gathered 
at one fell swoop. The writer herself was guilty a few summers 
since of turning a dozen children loose in an acre of pogonias 
near Bayville on the Maine coast. The little vandals fell upon 
them and slew them by thousands, and yet seemed to make na 
impression on the prevailing pink-purple tone of the meadow. 
uch places might be made to yield a perpetual income. Trans- 
planting and fostering young plants, distributing the seeds and 
discretion in harvesting, in a word, aiding instead of thwarting 
Nature, could not fail in valuable and financial results. Just as 
large tracts of once worthless land on the Maine coast now yield 
something like fifteen dollars per acre from the yearly cutting of 
young fir-trees for the Christmas season, and as many acres of 
undrained swamp in Michigan are being utilized for the growth 
and production of peppermint, so might the sand-barren and the 
peat-bog and even the stagnant pool be made to yield a wealth of 
flowers with an economic, an educational, and an esthetic value. 
