EDITORIAL 



In every acre of woodland or meadow on this planet there 

 are enough wonderful forms of plants to provide study for 

 several lifetimes, yet man ignores these marvels and, drawing 

 on his imagination for his facts, constructs a variety of blood- 

 curdling" tales about plants designed primarily to shock and 

 astound. One of the most persistent of these fabulous yarns 

 relates to a flower that devours men, quite after the fashion of 

 the minatour. This is the sort of story that the newspaper 

 syndicates invariably select for reproduction in the plate matter 

 sent to provincial dailies. Real facts are never startling enough, 

 or perhaps they lack the human interest. Thus we get such 

 absurdities as the following which we recently clipped from a 

 Chicago paper: "One of the early. English explorers. Hugh 

 Arkwright, who' sailed the Pacific in 1581, warned travelers 

 against visiting- El Banoor, the home of the death flower. This 

 flower, he says, is so large that a man can stand upright inside 

 one of its blossoms. But if he does so he will surely fall asleep, 

 lulled by the strange fragrance it distills. Then the flower folds 

 its petals and suffocates him. 'And so he passes into death 

 through splendid dreams and gives his body to the death flower 

 for food.' " To be sure we have to make allowances for the 

 tales of returned travellers, especially those told in the early 

 days of exploration, but we object to making any allowance for 

 the modern newspaper which prints such stuft". Xo wonder the 

 average reader finds the botanical journals a bit tame after such 

 thrilling pabulum. 



