300 
THE LADIES' FLORAL CABINET. 
I 
the earth you live upon. It was stated in the Times 
some time ago, that Liverpool invites any disease that 
may be in the air. If infection comes to Liverpool, it 
finds a soil that can hardly fail to generate an epidemic. 
I have heard it stated that the foundations of your mag¬ 
nificent city are tainted with disease. It seems, from 
the Poor Law Inspector's Report, you have nearly a 
thousand and a half of fever casesin hospitals, and three 
hundred are attended at home! Your town is about the 
most dangerous to live in of auy in England. The rate 
■or mortality is alarmingly high. Doubtless your ship¬ 
ping. your tramps, your emigrants, are all dangerous at 
times to your health. According to the Times, the 
general state of this town is unwholesome. It contains 
a large population, crowded in the most wretched tene¬ 
ments, and living in the dirtiest and most unhealthy 
habits. All this is bad enough, and you seem to have 
other and special centres of contamination and pollu¬ 
tion in your chemical works—your saline atmosphere— 
and the immense number of bricks burnt in clamps 
round your suburbs. I think I never smelt so many or 
such curious odors as aroimd Liverpool. It seems as if 
King Sulphur had been shaking himself up. and his 
fumes almost stifle the breath of strangers. Add to all 
these inevitable pollutions arising from work, traffic, 
life, combustion, respiration, decomposition, all fouling 
your great towns to the utmost of their capacity. We. 
ourselves, die daily, and our dead bodies tend to pollute 
the earth. 'We are dying now, and this great building 
is filled not only with the living, but the dead. Were 
our eyes set to a finer vision, we should see portions of 
every one of us in the apparently pure air of this room. 
Here are particles of eyes, ears, tongues, brains, chasing 
each other by the million, tumbling headlong into our 
lungs, and beating against the windows trying to es¬ 
cape. 
Do you ask me what has all this to do with the manu¬ 
facturing powers of plants ? It has everything to do 
with it. I have already remarked that plants 
are the cleanliest of all manufacturers, but we have 
seen that they are also shoddy merchants. Yea, 
more: they are chiefly this: they deal in pollution, 
and it is only through plants that the great prob¬ 
lem of the day, “What shall we do with our dirt!-'’ 
can be solved. There is no other mode of extinguish¬ 
ing dead matter but by its conversion into living sub¬ 
stance, and plant manufacturers are alone equal to this 
stupendous undertaking. All other possible means have 
been tried and failed. We have sent our waste up into 
the air, and it has returned to us in fevers and pesti¬ 
lences. We have turned our streams of reeking sew¬ 
erage into rivers and seas, until our great drinking 
cisterns have been poisoned at their sources. Then the 
more sensible cry arose, “To the land with your foul 
waste;” but the earth is tolerably full of graves already, 
and if we turn it into a great dry-earth closet or huge 
sewer sponge, there is great danger that by and by it 
may revolve around the sun a fever-stricken world of 
pestilence and death. The antidote to pollution is living 
plants: these absorb, transform, utilize, and annihilate 
it. They weave up those elements of disease and death 
into the very staff of life. You tell me such manufac¬ 
turers do not thrive here. The few you have refuse to 
grow. The remedy for this is more of them. Send 100 
brave soldiers against 10,000, and no courage or skill can 
save them from destruction. It is just so here; pollu¬ 
tion abounds in all directions, and you send out against 
them a few ragged hosts of weakly trees. The chief 
remedy for your alarming death rate is more trees 
around your suburbs, all your open spaces filled with 
sweet flowers in the centre of your magnificent city. 
Fight fever with the sweet incense of lovely (lowers, an¬ 
nihilate it with the absorbing force of fevor-consuming 
leaves. 
I think this city has the credit of being constitutional. 
Its voice is often raised against any change that might 
shake the stability of the British constitution. I reiter¬ 
ate theory, “The constitution is in dauger,” one more 
perfect, more venerable than that you so much revere, 
is in imminent peril. Your life depends upon it being 
maintained inviolate. The balance of parties, or rather 
forces in the atmosphere, is in great danger of being 
upset. A tremendous run is made in those centres of 
life and hives of industry for oxygen. You neither 
live nor work without it. On the other hand, whole 
volumes of dead carbon and other pollutions are thrown 
nto the atmosphere. An actual scarcity of the former, 
and an excess of the latter, means suffering or death to 
us all. How shall we rally to the defence of the atmos¬ 
pheric constitution? We have no choice of instru¬ 
ments. we have but one: but that is all-sufficient. Plants, 
alone, can drain the air of its excess of carbon, and re¬ 
turn to it a pure stream of oxygen. Every leaf, stem, 
and flower is employed, night and day, in restoring the 
atmospheric balance to an equilibrium. And, upon the 
whole, they have done their work perfectly. Here and 
there, and over such large towns as this, there are 
certain changes—an excess of foreign matter, dust, etc. 
—in the air. But, as a whole, its constituent parts are 
the same. To rectify these partial changes which are 
so fatal to health, you must plant more extensively. 
Girdle your city round with a wide baud of grand trees 
and green parks. Sentinel your streets with officers 
(sanitary trees) at regular distances, in green or golden 
uniforms, that will rest not from their labors day or 
night, nor leave for an instant their post of danger and 
of duty; enwreath your houses, homes, workshops, 
warehouses, mills, and factories with garlands of leaves 
and flowers; crowd your house-tops, window-sills, yards 
and areas with objects of beauty and fragrance; let 
flowers wave down to you a joy from every giddy 
garret, and send up a symbol of trustful hope from 
every deep, dark cellar, until they cover and gladden 
the earth as the “ waters cover the channels of the sea.” 
Plants are the true patron saints of these hardwork¬ 
ing, utilitarian times. Their perfumes are the best of all 
antidotes to all foul odors. Their life is a warfare with 
all elements that would be death to us. They gladden, 
purify, and ennoble the highways and byways of life, 
providing for rich and poor, manufacturer and mill- 
hand, prince and peasant alike, those grandest preserva¬ 
tives of health, a clean earth, pure air, and clear water. 
The ministrations of plants to man are constant. The}' 
never leave or forsake us. They meet us on the thresh¬ 
old of life; they abide with us to the last. None are 
too poor to enjoy flowers; none so rich as to be able to 
dispense with them. Through plants we live, move, 
and have our being. They distil for us the breath of 
our life. They raise our water; they make our food. 
They provide our clothing, our medicine in sickness, 
our strength in manhood, our sweet interpreters in love, 
our solace in suffering, our transfigurators at death. 
