110 



THE AMERICAN BOTANIST 



that the word, flour, has really been derived from the word 

 which designates the blossom of a plant. To most people the 

 flower is the best part of the plant. So settled is this, that ama- 

 teur gardeners may often be heard to speak of their flow^ers 

 when only leaves and stems are in sight. In a similar way, 

 then, the flour was the best part of the meal ; one might say 

 the flowering part, just as we now speak of the efflorescence 

 of a salt to indicate the fine pow^der that often forms upon it. 

 The idea of a blossom is also embalmed in various other words 

 with which we rarely associate it at present. For instance, to 

 florish once meant to bear flowers in profusion, though we 

 now speak of a plant as florishing if it merely produces an 

 abundance of leaves. The word, however, indicates how closely 

 the idea of the general wellbeing of the plant and floriferous- 

 ness are connected. Florid, again, originally meant covered 

 with flowers. We still speak of flowery discourse or florid 

 language and by a sort of extension of the idea, of a florid com- 

 plexion. The word florin, which has been in use for centuries 

 to designate various foreign coins also shows a derivation from 

 the flower. The flrst florin was coined in Florence but did not 

 take its name from that cit}'. It was called a florin because it 

 bore a flower — a lily — upon it. The word flower originally 

 came from the Latin flos or f I oris. 



John Burroughs on ''Nature Study." — I have a sus- 

 picion that ''nature study" as now followed in the schools — or 

 shall I say in the colleges ? — this class-room peeping and pr}ang 

 into the mechanism of life, dissecting, probing, tabulating, void 

 of free observation and shut away from the open air — would 

 have cured me of ni}^ love for nature. For love is the main 

 thing, the prime thing, and to train the eye and ear and acquaint 

 one with the spirit of the great out-of-doors, rather than a lot 

 of minute facts about nature is, or should be, the object of 

 nature study. Who cares about the anatoni}^ of the frog? But 

 to know the live frog* — his place in the season and the land- 



