NATIVE WILD FLOWERS 
a slender raceme; sometimes the little pedicels or flower- 
stalks are bent or twisted to one side, so as to throw the 
flowers all in one direction, as in the figure given in Pursh’s 
work before alluded to. : 
The scape springs from a small deep tuber, bearing a single 
pair of soft oily succulent leaves. In the white-flowered 
species (C. Caroliniana) these leaves are placed about mid- 
way up the stem, but in the pink (C. Virginica) the leaves 
lie closer to the ground and are smaller and narrower, of a 
dark bluish-green hue. Our Spring Beauties well deserve 
their pretty poetical name. They come in with the robin and 
the song sparrow, the hepatica and the first white violet; 
they linger in shady spots, as if unwilling to desert us till 
more sunny days have wakened up a wealth of brighter 
blossoms to gladden the eye; yet the first and the last are 
apt to be most prized by us, with flowers as well as other 
treasures. 
How infinitely wise and merciful are the arrangements of 
the Great Creator! Let us instance the connection between 
bees and flowers. In cold climates the former lie torpid, or 
nearly so, during the long months of winter, until the genial 
rays of the sun and light have quickened vegetation into 
activity and buds and blossoms open their stores of nutri- 
ment necessary for the busy insect tribes. 
The bees seem made for the blossoms, the blossoms for the 
bees. On a bright March morning what sound can be more 
in harmony with the sunshine and blue skies than the 
murmuring of the honey bees in a border of cloth-of-gold 
Crocuses? What sight more cheerful to the eye? But I 
forget. Canada has few of these sunny flowers, and no 
March days like those that woo the hive bees from their win- 
ter dormitories. And even April is with us only a name. 
We have no April month of rainbows, suns and showers. We 
miss the deep blue skies and silver thronelike clouds that 
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