NATURAL HISTORY OF THE FARM 



Fig. 81. Hepatica. 



midsummer, and disappear utterly above ground until 

 spring comes around again; such are adder's tongue and 

 Dutchman's breeches, and 

 others that grow in the deep- 

 est shades of the woods. But, 

 on the other hand, the foliage 

 of hepaticas and moss-pink 

 is evergreen. 



Fine as are these wild 

 flowers, they are rapidly being 

 exterminated. Their value is 

 esthetic, not commercial. The 

 land they occupy is all being 

 taken from them for fields 

 and stock-pens. Long since, 

 they were driven from our 



doors. Of late, with the pressure of men for room, with the 

 extension of fields, and especially with the pasturing of every 

 bit of woodland, they are being exterminated in their last 

 retreats. The time is coming when, if we would save them 

 for our posterity, we must get them back about our doors 

 again, where we can propagate them and protect them from 

 utter annihilation. They will grow there as well as in the 

 woods, if planted in suitable places. Of course, they will not 

 grow on a smoothly mown lawn; but possibly the present 

 zeal for leveling everything and having only mown lawns 

 about one's place may yet develop into something better. 

 Far more beautiful than grass as a ground-cover for the 

 moist bank or for the shady place where there is no trampling, 

 is a growth of common blue violets or of bloodroot or of 

 wild ginger. Finer than any grass, for covering a dry sunny 

 bank, is a close gray-green carpet of moss-pink. Why should 

 one drain the low wet spot on his grounds, when he may, by 

 properly planting it, have there, through the season, a 



