Harrisburg telegraph. [volume] (Harrisburg, Pa.) 1879-1948, 1919-08-20
Scientific Discussions
by Garrett P. SerUiss

God Almighty first planted a gar
den," says Lord Bacon in his fam
Gus Essays" and he adds that gar
dening is the purest of human
pleasures"
1t is to be hoped that some at
least of those who. at the call of
| the Government two summers ago,
planted war gardens" will now
continue to plant gardens for their
own pleasure. If you do not wish
TO raise vegetables, then raise flow
ers.
Indeed, it was of ornamental
gardens, or flower gardens" that
Bacon wrote, and the fact that so
philosophical thinker as he was
gave so much serious attention to
what we now call the aesthetic"
side of life, the side concerned with
the appreciation and cultivation of
beauty, ought to encourage every
| body to develop that higher part
of this nature which is above ordin-
airy utilitarianism.
Bacon was very brief in his es-
say on gardens, as in all his es-
says. 1t was his method to COM
press a multitude of thoughts and
suggestions into a little space, and
the compression is so great that
sometimes a single sentence of his
writing expands, while the reader
| ponders upon it, as wonderfully as
the endless colored ribbon that the
prestidigitateur draws from a pellet
behind his teeth until 1T lies in a
rainbow heap as high as his chin.
The breath of flowers" says
RacOn "iS far n ai
where it comes and goes like the
warbling of music, than in the
hand; therefore nothing is more
fit for that delight than to know
what be the flowers and plants that
do best perfume the air"
He gives a list of them with their
| seasons, and when you read what
l am now going to quote it will be
strange if your imagination does
not present you with a picture of the
great philosopher, in his quaint
! Elizabethan clothes, treading upon
a carpet of flowers and expanding
his nostrils to catch their sweet
| ness.
Those flowers which perfume the
air most delightfully."-, not passed by
as the rest, but being trodden upon
and crushed, are three; that is bur-
| net, wild thyme and water -mints.
Therefore you are to set whole al
| leys of them, to have the pleasure
| when you walk or tread"
Given the perfumed atmosphere
of a garden. other consequent de-
lights follow, which Bacon did not
mention, though he must have
known and appreciated them. They
are voices of birds and insects
drawn to the flowers, and the ami
mated spectacle of ceaselessly NOV
/ ing and changing colors and forms
| due to the constant presence OF
throngs of the jewelled inhabitants
of the air.
What is more pleasure giving and
thought-inspiring that the sight oil
the "burly, doing humble bee," as
yellow with pollen as an argosy
of the golden age of adventure
rummaging deep in the corolla ot
a flower, and buzzing from one rich
cup to another a true freebooter
of the atmosphere? 1t is worth
while to plant a little garden simply
| to draw to it these bass-viol PLAYERS
of the insect world.
But, indeed, a garden is a me-
tropolis for insects. AS the city
is the best place to study human
nature, because there you can find
an abundance of varied specimens
following their characteristic oc.
cupations and revealing their pc.
culiarities under the stimulus OF
many-sided contact, so the garden
presents you with an omniun1
gatherum of insect species, where
it is both easy and interesting tc
distinguish between the evil doers
on one hand, and the innocents and
benefactors on the other.
AS their tribes pass before you
you should consider them philo.
sophically, as Bacon would have
done. If there are two or three
ant-hills of different species in your
garden they will afford you the
materials for writing an Iliad anc
an Odyssey-which. perhaps, yol
had better keep for your own ex
elusive reading, because there are
more Troys than Homers.
Gardens are harbors for the mos
beautiful butterflies, which come
like fairy-painted ships to visit them
The alleys are avenues that some
times glitter with professions O.
brilliant-winged beetles. so ex
quisitely colored and polished tha
they seem like living Jewels. Blue
birds. brown birds. red birds anC
singing birds love a garden if it ha,
few branchy trees overhanginl
the flowers. And when the gem O.
the animal creation, the ruby
throated humming bird, visits YOU,
garden you will feel repaid for al
the money and time and labor /
has cost, leaving you the beauty o
the flowers as Dure profit