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"If I knew 



Only the herbs and simples of the wood. 



line, cinquefoil, gill, vervain and agrimony, 



Blue-vetch and trilliuni. hawkweed, sassafras. 



Milkweeds and murky brakes, quaint pipes and sundew 



And rare and virtuous roots, which in these woods 



Draw untold juices from the common earth. 



Untold, unknown, and I could surely spell 



Their fragrance, and their chemistry apply 



By sweet affinities to human flesh. 



Driving the foe and stablishing the friend — 



O, that were much, and I could be a part 



Of the round day, related to the sun 



And planted world, and full executor 



Of their imperfect functions. 



But these young scholars, who invade our hills. 



Bold as the engineer who fells the wood, 



And travelling often in the cut he makes. 



Love not the flower they pluck, and know it not. 



And all their botany is Latin names." — Emerson. 



Copyright, 1912. 

 By W. S. Blatchley. 



"How ineffably vast and how hopelessly infinite is the study of na- 

 ture! If a mere dilletante observer like myself — a saunterer who gathers 

 posies and chronicles butterflies by the wayside for the pure love of them 

 — were to tell even all that he has noticed in passing of the manners and 

 habits of a single weed — of its friends and its enemies, its bidden guests 

 and its dreaded foes, its attractions and its defenses, its little life history 

 and the wider life history of its race — he would fill a whole book up with 

 what, he knows about that one little neglected flower; and yet he would 

 have found cut after all but a small fraction of nil that could be known 

 abonl it, if all were ever knowable." — (Irani Allen. 



