THE WILD SPRING FLOWERS OF THE FARM — 21 
succession of such beautiful flowers as the marsh-marigolds, 
lady’s-slippers, cardinal-flowers, and hibiseus, maintained 
with a minimum of care. Why reduce everything to this 
dead level of artificial mediocrity? 
One should not “rob the woods,’ where wild flowers 
remain, and selfishly deprive others of the pleasure of seeing 
them there. It is better to raise them from seeds, or to buy 
from a dealer who raises them from seeds (and not from one 
who is making a business of robbing the woods). But often 
when a wood is being cleared for plowing, or a new road is 
building, the wild flowers about to be destroyed may be 
taken up and given a place of refuge in private grounds. 
Success with growing wild flowers depends on one’s 
ability to take a hint from nature. Every plant has its 
requirements of light and moisture, and one may learn what 
these are by observing under what conditions it thrives 
best when wild. It is a waste of time and labor, and an 
advertisement of stupidity, to set out wild plants where they 
cannot possibly live. They are far better suited to informal 
plantings than are expensive exotics, and once established 
in suitable places they are practically self-sustaining. 
Fortunately the wood-crop and the wild flowers grow 
well together, and flourish on rough land not suitable for 
tillage. Fortunately for the wild flowers, also, farmers are 
learning that the woodlot is more productive when not 
closely pastured. Often it has seemed to be the policy of 
the farmer to include every bit of rough woodland, however 
little forage it might afford, inside his pasture fence, on the 
general theory that every green thing his cattle might eat 
was clear gain to him. But of how much value in the diet 
of an ox is a handful of lilies? Yet if they be eaten or tramp- 
led out of existence, how much beauty is lost! On many 
farms a better spirit of enlightenment prevails. The woodlot 
is outside the pasture fence; and, protected from grazing 
