1893.] The Philosophy of Flower Seasons. 781 
and, reciprocally, climatic conditions have become more and 
more favorable to the rapid development of the said forms. 
So a floral type that ages ago would have reached its perfection 
only after a long continuance of favoring season, now may, 
burst into the fulness of its maturity with the first warmth of 
spring. But as change succeeded change in the course of time, 
a maximum point would be reached, from which the condi- 
tions would become less and less favorable to the rapid devel- 
opment of types surviving from an earlier age. Then these 
would dwindle from the earth,—replaced, driven out, by those 
that had come into existence in a later age. Thus, in the ages 
to come, the early flowers of to-day will disappear; to be 
replaced by what are now our later flowers; whose place, in 
turn, will be filled by forms that are yet to be. All this is but 
a bare suggestion, yet in it may be, perchance, the spark of 
truth that will guide further observation to a more definite 
decision. 
This very relation between flowers and seasons that the 
evolutionary floral system brings to light, may, in turn, 
modify somewhat that system, and so eradicate many seeming 
anomalies. And thus the added law may be better established 
by the perfecting of the fundamental one,—and vice versa. 
This consideration cannot be ignored. 
In the light of all these facts and their regulating principles 
we can feel with fullest power that harmony of relations in 
the flora of each succeeding month,—a harmony to which 
even the casual observer cannot be insensible. The quarter of 
our country we have scanned is a wide sweep—coast-plain, 
hill-regions, mountains, and prairie ; and if it offers so signifi- 
cant suggestions we can justly say, inducti ely, that there must 
be much here that is of far wider application. At least, there 
is full cause to believe that more extended research in this 
little-tested field of flower philosophy will be well repaid ; and 
it may, further, open up an analogous field, yet unthought-of, 
in the realms of lower, flowerless, plant-life. The story told, 
we realize that its plot is simply another instance of the 
expression of universal law in that which rather seems a law 
unto itself. 
