The first and second edition of our Book of Wild Flowers was published
last year under the title of “CANADIAN WILD FLOWERS;” but it has been
suggested by some American friends that we ought not to have limited the
title to the Wild Flowers of _Canada_, as nature has given them a much
wider geographical range, and, in fact, there are none of those that
have been portrayed and described in our volume but may be found
diffused over the whole of the Eastern and Northern States of the Union,
as well as to the North and West of the Great Lakes. We, therefore, have
rectified the error in our present issue, not wishing to put asunder
those whom the Great Creator has united in one harmonious whole, each
family and tribe finding its fitting place as when it issued freshly
forth from the bounteous hand of God who formed it for the use of His
creatures and to His own honor and glory.
As our present volume embraces but a select few of the Native Flowers of
this Northern Range of the Continent, it is our intention to follow it
by succeeding series, which will present to our readers the most
attractive of our lovely Wild Flowers, and flowering shrubs. The subject
offers a wide field for our future labours.
What a garland of loveliness has nature woven for man’s admiration, and
yet, comparatively speaking, how few appreciate the beauties thus
lavishly bestowed upon them?
The inhabitants of the crowded cities know little of them even by name,
and those that dwell among them pass them by as though they heeded them
not, or regarded them as worthless weeds, crying, “Cut them down, why
cumber they the ground?” To such careless ones they do indeed “waste
their sweetness on the desert air.” Yet the Wild Flowers have deeper
meanings and graver teachings than the learned books of classical lore
so much prized by the scholar, if he will but receive them.
They shew him the parental care of a benificent God for the winged
creatures of the air, and for the sustenance of the beasts of the field.
They point to the better life, the resurrection from the darkness of the
grave. They are emblems of man’s beauty and of his frailty. They lend us
by flowery paths from earth to heaven, where the flowers fade not away.
Shall we then coldly disregard the flowers that our God has made so
wondrously fair, to beautify the earth we live on?
Mothers of America teach your little ones to love the Wild Flowers and
they will love the soil on which they grew, and in all their wanderings
through the world their hearts will turn back with loving reverence to
the land of their birth, to that dear home endeared to their hearts by
the remembrance of the flowers that they plucked and wove for their
brows in their happy hours of gladsome childhood.
How many a war-worn soldier would say with the German hero of Schiller’s
tragedy:
“Oh gladly would I give the blood stained victor’s wreath
For the first violet of the early spring,
Plucked in those quiet fields where I have journeyed.”
SCHILLER.