Good Families 239 
vironment, that, in turn, owes to them much 
of its individuality. This fact again serves to 
enrich the association they have in our minds. 
A flower is part of its setting and can never 
appear the same when taken from it. Bare 
mention of the clintonia brings to my mind 
the spruce woods, the ground hemlock and 
hobblebush, and the mysterious song of 
the veery on the mountainside. Pentstemons 
have as strong an association: the blue with 
the misty ranges of the Rockies where the 
green towhee is singing; the red with the lava 
gorges of Arizona and the metallic call of the 
rock wren. 
In the instant that a wild flower is plucked, 
something goes from it—the spirit as it were 
—and though what is left is beautiful it is 
but a tithe of the whole. It is impossible 
to take a wild flower from its setting: we 
carry away only that obvious part which we 
can gather in the hand. Yet how many stop 
to look at a blossom—to really see it as it is— 
before they pick it? Pouncing upon the 
flower, they see only that fraction they are 
able to carry off. A truer appreciation would 
have spared us many plants of our wild 
garden that are becoming extinct. 
Even so, we owe much to that environ- 
