116 
ficial surroundings of the ball room, or the often but little less 
hybrid conditions of many city homes, than the wild flowers could 
possibly be. 
Older pupils might be taught the utter incongruity of asso- 
ciating the dying glories of the woodlands’ most delicate plants 
with the budding hopes and aspirations which should prevail in 
every feature of a wedding celebration, And — is no wie 
nary danger to the wild flowers, but, on the contrary, is a rec 
and rapidly-growing menace ; wild plants, ees daintiest 2 
their kind, having been a mietked. and, in some instances, an 
exclusive feature of the decorations at several recent weddings. 
Of the pleasures of the cultivation of flowers as against the 
delights of merely picking them, only to watch their more or less 
rapid decay, there is but little to be suggested to the teachers, 
because already they are doing all in their power, as far as the 
limited facilities of class-rooms will permit, to cultivate a taste for 
living plants, while their endeavors in that direction have led to the 
suggestion of roof gardens or possibly a conservatory as additions 
to modern school buildings, to relieve the teachers of the trials 
and ie ania peculiar to window-gardening under most 
eee condition 
Now a vee or two as to some of the conditions which con- 
front New York members of the society in their endeavors to 
preserve the wild flowers. Difficulties increase with the increas- 
ing love of the children for flowers of every kind and quality and 
with their insatiate longing for them; a longing which there are 
few opportunities of gratifying in a large city which is rapidly 
devouring the suburbs in its speedy growth. 
This longing finds ea in frequent demands for “ just 
one flower” made on any and everyone who carries a handful 
of blossoms through the as streets. A bouquet of bushel- 
basket dimensions would not outlast a half-mile walk if an at- 
tempt was made to satisfy this craving by the gift of a single 
blossom to every child that asks for one. 
Is it strange, then, that every stretch of wild accessible to such 
flower-starved children should be denuded of every bit of bloom 
in a twinkling, or more singular that whole handfuls of such in- 
