65 
noticed that the evergreen native ferns are much used by Boston 
florists as a cheap green to add to bunches of carnations and 
other leafless flowers to save their hothouse smilax and diosma. 
A friend in Orchard Park, N. Y., writes me that two species of 
evergreen ferns have been practically exterminated about Buffalo 
by the greenhouse men. “Where twelve years ago were lux- 
uriant beds and rich masses of these ferns, now only a few puny 
specimens are to be seen. The same thing has happened to the 
beautiful maiden-hair fern, though it never was as abundant as 
other ferns.” She also writes from Connecticut, ‘‘ from the country 
about Waterbury in fact, from New Haven Co., within twenty 
years, the once riotously abundant Kedmia latifolia and plentiful 
Epigaea repens have been skinned. The latter has almost disap- 
peared and the former grows in scrubby little plants with yellow- 
ish leaves in place of the rich dark foliage that remember. The 
rose-colored wild azalea or swamp honey-suckle has become rare 
and the great bird’s-foot violet is very rare now in this locality, 
although I remember its growing in sheets of blue on the sandy 
hillside, thirty years ago. The same story is true of the ferns 
ere—they are sent to the New York market. We think the 
Goths and Huns barbarians to destroy the art treasures of Rome; 
but we are more barbarous toward our beautiful native trees and 
plants.” 
The agents invoked by the Plant Protection Society to prevent 
this wholesale destruction are: 
Legislation—such as protects the Hartford trailing fern ; 
Moral suasion—articles in papers and magazines, explaining 
the dangers which threaten our native flora, and calling upon 
people not to buy certain species. 
Education—which goes more deeply into the subject, and 
endeavors to teach both children and adults, by lectures, lessons, 
and talks, the beauty and worth of our native flora, the duty of 
preserving it, and the best way to enjoy it. Can we not persuade 
those who go out to gather flowers that a few blossoms showing 
the graceful outline and contrasting leaves are really more 
pleasing to the eye than a great crowded bunch? Surely after 
all these decades of Japanese art, we ought to have a generation 
