Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 63.djvu/255

Rh boy or girl, having at his disposal various kinds of land and being able to gain intimate knowledge of the conditions best suited to the different wild flowers which would not flourish in a city park, can experiment with their cultivation, and in time find the raising of native plants a useful and fascinating employment. The instilling of a love of flowers will help to protect them, but this must be united with scientific knowledge of their structure and relation to their environment in order that the necessity for restricting the manner in which they are gathered and the number that are collected will be evident.

The epigæa perhaps has suffered more from inroads upon it than any other New England plant. Its sweet odor and delicate beauty

were in themselves attractive. Its connection with the Plymouth settlement created for it a patriotic sentiment which unfortunately was not united with a knowledge of the office of its underground rootstock and its slow manner of growth. Bryant's poem drew to the fringed gentian the attention of those who never knew before of its intrinsic beauty and interesting botanical structure. It is now being gathered for flower markets and becoming scarcer in meadows.

The epigæa, the gentian and other fast disappearing flowers, though difficult of cultivation, should be choicely guarded in wild flower reservations, which should be to the plants of America what the large country estates are to those of England. The Sharon Biological