Year: 1879



 Nothing that is not human goes so far to make any particular house into home the plants which grow up in and about it. People living even in the city, if they have any scrap of garden or only few healthy pots of flowers, feel pang at the thought of leaving them, though 1t may be to visit the na- tive haunts of our brightest flowers. And yet how easily, when we have to fit" we can take our flowers with us, or at least plant a new generation of them in our new home. Surely in no other object upon which human affec- tions can be bestowed do we find the proportion of pain to enjoyment so very small, aRd the possibility of mourning self-reproach so nearly excluded. We can not say entirely excluded, for the true lovers of flowers know that they are alive, and can scarcely doubt that they are conscious, and that at times they suffer from our neglect. But we may surely hope that they do so far realize our ideas of Paradise as to re- joice constantly in the air and sunshine, without fear and toil, and, having bloomed their day, to yield up their lives without struggle. It isa great thing in our own checkered lives to be able to enter into communion with iv ing creatures so absolutely pure, so in- nocently bright and fresh, and so inca pable of causing any serious anxiety. We do enter into relations with them, when we tend them, as surely as nurse enters into relations with tue children she brings up- It Is curious, by the by, to observe how much there Is in common between tending plants and tending children of the sick. The old nurse in family whose nursl1ngs have grown up and left her hands free seems to take naturally to window gar dening as an outlet of her habit of cherishing. And how many hospital wards have fernery or few bright pots in which the women whose days and nights are spent in ministering to the sick, find refreshment and delight in ministering also to the needs of creatures who do not themselves suffer, but brighten and relieve the sufferers beside them. The same watchful tenderness, the same instinctive reading of the signs of physical conditions, and promptness in amending them, which make a good nurse go far to make good gardener, and the practice of gar dening might even be in many respects a useful preparation for tending human patients.

 There is in attending to flowers just that mixture of manual with mental occupation which is to most people peculiarly restoring as a relaxation, with the advantage that whatever is too heavy in the manual part of the work can be easily delegated to others, as 1t scarcely requires any skill. = The men, tai part of the work, on the other hand, is not severe, and is all interwoven with keen and simple pleasures pleasure of beautiful colors and forms, of fragrance, and of freshness-not to mention association and hope. Our plants make just enough demand upon us to begulle us into little daily lin gering among them, which soon be- comes a delightful habit; and though they will supply any amount of occu- patton, they never require enough at tention to be serious Interruption to other pursuits. The very busy or very lazy may enjoy watching the continu al growth and unfolding of ferns in their glass abode, without lifting fin ger for weeks at a time to do anything for them; while there is room for any amount of delightful daily pottering over climbing or freely towering plants; and if once spirit of anything like scientific observation gets footing in our minds, there is no limit to the ma terials they will supply for it. Perhaps the chief draw back, In a moral point of view. to the advantages of gardening, is the really bloodthirsty spirit of re- venge and intolerance which 1t kindles against slugs, spiders, wire worms, green fly, and other blameless creatures struggling for existence with cxasper- ating, and as it sometimes appears to us, almpst fendish ingenuity. No doubt even they have interesting hab- It's, but the gardener who could watch them in 8 calmly scientific spirit must be more or less than human.-N r. Home To,f~a31J