DESCRIPTIVE CATALOGUE. 



l^e Elowef ©^fden 



" Sweet nurslings of the vernal skies, 



Bathed in soft airs, and fed with dew, 

 What more than magic in you lies, 



To fill the heart's fond view ? 

 Relics ye are of Eden's bowers, 



As pure, as fragrant, and as fair 

 As when ye crowned the sunshine hours, 



Of happy wanderers there."" 



N this age, when the means of human enjoyment have so greatly 

 increased, and a diversity of pure and elevating pleasures await 

 each sense of the lover of nature and art, flowers have become 

 an indispensable luxury. 



For, as there is a co-relation and harmony of the facul- 

 ties ; and a just education demands that culture shall be many 

 sided ; so a pure and elevated .aste neglects no form of beauty, 

 natural or artistic, 

 (^ There is in all well balanced minds a passion for the beau- 



tiful, and this natural susceptibility, directed by education and developed by the 

 ministry of congenial objects, constitutes one of our broadest and most blissful 

 relations to nature and mankind. 



Flowers are nature's holidgty garb ; a radiant alphabet by which the devout 

 heart can interpret the Divine Love, They appeal to the finer susceptibilities 

 more universally than music or works of art, and are nature's softest utterances, 

 that, like the still, small voice of the Prophet, touches the heart. While the 

 lofty mountain, or " old ocean's gray and melancholy M^aste " awaken solemn 

 and grand emotions, impressing the hermit or the philosopher, flowers are alike 

 the joy of rich and poor, the aged and children ; and, as the creations of life 

 itself, are the heritage of every land, the delight of man, or the prophecy of his 

 advent. 



When the eye is weary of the expansive grandeur of field and forest, it 

 finds grateful relief as it rests upon the simple beauty of the modest flower. In 

 this there is such a combitation of charms, that it seems as if the Great Archi- 



