grief-stricken over the death of her youthful lover.

"Alas, the Paphian! fair Adonis slain!
Tears plenteous as his blood she pours amain;
But gentle flowers are born and bloom around
From every drop that falls upon the ground:
Where streams his blood, there blushing springs the rose;
And where a tear has dropped, a wind-flower blows."

Indeed, in reading the poets ancient and modern for references to
this favorite blossom, one realizes as never before the
significance of an anthology, literally a flower gathering.

But it is chiefly the European anemone that is extolled by the
poets. Nevertheless our more slender, fragile, paler-leaved, and
smaller-flowered species, known, strange to say, by the same
scientific name, possesses the greater charm. Doctors, with more
prosaic eyes than the poets, find acrid and dangerous juices in
the anemone and its kin. Certain European peasants will run past
a colony of these pure innocent blossoms in the belief that the
very air is tainted by them. Yet the Romans ceremonially picked
the first anemone of the year, with an incantation supposed to
guard them against fever. The identical plant that blooms in our
woods, which may be found also in Asia, is planted on graves by
the Chinese, who call it the "death flower."

To leave legend and folk lore, the practical scientist sees in
the anemone, trembling and bending before the wind, a perfect
adaptation to its environment. Anchored in the light soil by a
horizontal rootstock; furnished with a stem so slender and