"Blessed be God for flowers, For the bright, gentle, holy thoughts that breathe From out their odorous beauty, like a wreath Of sunshine on life's hours." THE WANDERINGS OF FLOWERS-TENACITY OF LIFE-HELP TO FORM SOILS SEEDS THE POLLEN-MYSTERIES FROM ROCKS-TRAVELLING OF FRA GRANCE AND COLOR. HERE are voices that are eloquent though they utter no sounds. There are beautiful faces that speak of innocence and love with looks which affect our hearts more rapidly through our eyes than could words however skilfully presented. And on the faces of little flowers how plainly can we read thoughts of beauty, of modesty, and of design, which the longest description would fail to picture to our minds as faithfully as does one short vision! A beautifully-carved image has neither soul nor mind; yet how eloquently it may speak of the sculptor's design and of his thoughts of beauty! Every little flower is a word in the wide-spread language of flowers, every fruit a sentence, every sprig of moss and blade of grass a conjunction or particle, a little word, which helps to add interest to the whole; and the history of each, in its efforts for life, forms a volume in the large library of flowers and plants scattered from the equator even to the ice-bound regions of the farthest North. Few are aware how widely spread throughout the world are the plants and flowers, and some trees, the names of which are so common, and which are mentioned even in the smallest school-book on botany. Few consider what wanderers they have been. The lily, the tulip, the walnut, the cherry, the vine, with others, seem to have started into existence in soils far east of Europe, and even of Syria.** Most of the flowers and plants which add such beauty to European and American gardens are products of the distant East, and have been found growing spontaneously only near the plains. and mountains of Persia and the Caucasus. Perhaps, if we could trace back the ancestry of many beautiful plants and fruits, as we can that of families, we should be guided through ages, and over distant seas and lands, until in our search we should tread within the long-lost Eden, where was planted the first garden, and where flowers first bloomed in beauty and sent forth their fragrance and opened their bright colors to the sun in the early and sinless childhood of creation. And when our first parents made the first fruits the occasion of their shame and exile, flowers and gentle plants not included in the curse seemed in sympathy to wander out from Eden, going forth on their joyful mission to deck the "thistle and the thorn," * Michaux. |