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THE INFLUENCE OF FLORICULTURE. i 
An outline study of botany, or (what is sometimes substituted for this) a close observa- 
tion of nature, is necessary in most of the arts and sciences. The graceful, wavy, curved 
lines of flowers, leaves and fruits form an important feature in architectural ornamentation, 
as well as in the minor arts of cabinet-making, engraving, molding and the like. The 
exquisite blending of colors in the flowers and foliage of plants furnishes the painter with 
studies which he may imitate but cannot surpass. And the poets have ever been indehted 
to the vegetable kingdom for some of their happiest flights of brilliant fancy. 
A love of flowers will supply a praiseworthy incentive to the merchant, clerk, artisan 
or laborer to leave behind him the smoke, dust and discomfort of the crowded city, and 
bask during an hour’s or a day’s leisure in the invigorating country air, while he enlarges 
his stock of knowledge by investigations that gently interest but do not overtax his intel- 
lectual powers. The moralist will find in the love of plants and flowers a helpful hand- 
maiden to religion and virtue; even the mechanical pursuit of the mere trade of gardener 
has been conducive to a relatively superior morality, and freedom from crime. Horace 
Mann found that there were fewer gardeners, in proportion to their numbers, than of any 
other trade or calling in the poorhouses and prisons of Great Britain. Floriculture 
has also an advantage over many amateur pursuits in the cheapness and facility with 
which it can be followed, ax every plant may be regarded as an unfolded book, and every 
flower an attractive object-lesson, while, unlike mechanics, astronomy or chemistry, it 
needs no expensive working apparatus. Flowers are the most delightful of all teachers. 
THE USE OF FLOWERS. 
God might have bade the earth briny forth 
Enough for great and small, 
The oak-tree and the cedar-tree, 
Without a flower at all. 
We might have had enough, enough 
For every want of ours, : 
For luxury, medicine and toil, 
And yet have had no flowers. 
Then wherefore, wherefore were they made, 
All dyed with rainbow light, 
All fashioned with supremest grace 
Upspringing day and night:— 
Springing in valleys green and low, 
And on the mountains high, 
And in the silent wilderness 
Where no man passes by? 
Our outward life requires them not; 
Then wherefore had they birth? 
To minister delight to man, 
To beautify the earth; 
To comfort man—to whisper life, 
Whene’er his faith is dim. 
For who so careth for the flowers 
Will care much more for him! ) 
—Mary Howitt. 
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