A BIT OF USELESSNESS 113 
appreciation of its own beauties. There are ants 
which spend most of their life making gardens, 
knowing the uses of fertilizers, mulching, plant- 
ing seeds, exercising patience, recognizing the 
time of ripeness, and gathering the edible fruit. 
But this is underground, and the ants are blind. 
There is a bird, however—the bower bird of 
Australia—which appears to take real delight in 
bright things, especially pebbles and flowers for 
their own sake. Its little lean-to, or bower of 
sticks, which has been built in our own Zoologi- 
cal Park in New York City, is fronted by a 
cleared space, which is usually mossy. To this 
it brings its colorful treasures, sometimes a score 
of bright star blossoms, which are renewed when 
faded and replaced by others. All this has, prob- 
ably, something to do with courtship, which 
should inspire a sonnet. 
From the first pre-Egyptian who crudely 
scratched a lotus on his dish of clay, down to 
the jolly Feckenham men, the human race has 
given to flowers something more than idle curi- 
osity, something less than mere earnest of fruit 
or berry. 
At twelve thousand feet I have seen one of 
my Tibetans with nothing but a few shreds of 
