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BULLETIN OF THE NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY. 
Flowering Plants and Trees of Rockwood Park. 
By G. U. Hay, 
Abstract of Article read January 3, 1911, 
The numerous well beaten paths, the trails of seekers after 
adventure and wild flowers for generations past, easily guide 
through Rockwood Park those in quest of the fresh floral 
treasures of spring and summer. But these byways tell another 
tale. Some of the rarest of the wild flowers are no longer to be 
found, and the mayflower, once so abundant, is in danger of 
becoming exterminated by careless pickers who tear away the 
creeping stems. The bump of acquisitiveness is so strongly 
developed in children and in some of larger growth, that the 
temptation to gather everything in sight is strong, especially 
of our choicest flowers. Happily there is a growing disposition, 
and that disposition is being fostered by the more thoughtful 
teachers of our public schools, that there is more delight in seeing 
a flower grow and in leaving its beauty and fragrance for others 
to enjoy, than to scatter its withered petals along the pathway 
or the street. 
Rockwood is one of the most natural parks in America and 
it should be most diligently impressed on all to preserve as 
completely as possible for future generations its wild flowers, 
birds and other natural features. The unwritten law of the 
Horticultural Garden, not to pick flowers, might well be applied 
to the whole Park. 
A walk through the Garden in late April or early May does 
not reveal many flowers in bloom other than the rock cress or 
the deep blue scillas; but a little later there are daffodils, hya- 
cinths, saxifrages, pansies, tulips, primulas, hawthorn, Siberian 
pea, followed by columbines of many colors, lupins, larkspurs 
and others, many of which remind one of the hillsides and hedge- 
rows of England. There they grow wild, and much earlier than 
with us, a tribute to fewer frosts, a more pervading moisture 
and the richer soil of Britain. 
