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PREFACE

TO THE

WILD FLOWERS OF NORTH AMERICA.

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.