Presented to the
LIBRARY of the
UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO
by
NORAH DE PENCIER
News of Spring
M auric
<i^awo.n .)vii«i8
Dodd, i)
f\
ifuaus
^^^Hr
SPRING FLOWERS
A
News of Spring
And Other Nature Studies
By
Maurice Maeterlinck
Translated by
Alexander Teixeira De Mattos
Illustrated by
Edward J. Detmold
New York
Dodd^ Mead and Company
ign
Copyright, 1902, 1903, 1904, 1905, 1906, 1907
By harper & BROTHERS
Copyright, 1904, 1905
By MAURICE MAETERLINCK
Copyright, 1904, 1907
By DODD, mead & COMPANY
I! DEC 2 01855
10S2787
TRANSLATOR'S NOTE
Of the eight nature essays contained in this edition, the
first, Our City Gardens, has hitherto appeared only in The
Daily Mail and is now for the first time reprinted. The re-
mainder form part of the two volumes entitled The Measure
of the Hours and The Double Garden; and I have taken the
opportunity not only of revising my translation with some
thoroughness, but also of introducing all the additions and
corrections which the author has made in the French edition
of these two books, issued, in either case, after the publication
of the first English version in America.
Alexander Teixeira de Mattos.
Chelsea, 6 June, 19 12.
Contents
PAGE
TRANSLATOR'S NOTE V v
OUR CITY GARDENS i
THE INTELLIGENCE OF THE FLOWERS 19
PERFUMES iii^
NEWS OF SPRING (127
FIELD FLOWERS 141
CHRYSANTHEMUMS 157
OLD-FASHIONED FLOWERS 171
THE WRATH OF THE BEE 201
Illustrations
SPRING FLOWERS Frontispiece
AN OLD GARDEN Page 13
SYCAMORE AND MOTHS " 23
VENUS FLY-TRAP " 45
THORNS « 73
ORCHIS LATIFOLIA « 81
CATASETUM AND CYPRIPEDIUMS " 87
CORYANTHES MACULATA " 99
ROSE "115
JASMINE " 123
ALMOND BLOSSOMS " 131
SPRING " 145
KINGCUPS " 149
SNOWDROPS " 153
CHRYSANTHEMUMS " 161
DELPHINIUMS AND FOXGLOVES " 175
POPPIES « 183
TULIPS " 191
HOLLYHOCKS " 195
DISTURBED " 205
OUR CITY GARDENS
OUR CITY GARDENS
I
IN our large towns, most of the gardens made or rear-
ranged within the last half century seem laid out on an
unvarying plan. They all present the same winding
paths, which turn upon themselves to lead nowhither, the in-
evitable lake, in a more or less drawn-out ellipse, the essential
lawn, with the useless and obvious mounds and valleys, adorned
at intervals with everlastingly oval flower-beds, while, here
and there, an exotic plant, a palm, an araucaria or an aloe,
stands chillily awaiting an uncertain ray of sunshine. All
this is neither extremely ugly nor extremely displeasing, be-
cause nothing is quite ugly or displeasing in the world of plants
and the most indifferent display of green is welcome to the
eye of one who lives in a stone prison ; and yet we are entitled
to ask if these paltry and monotonous combinations really ex-
haust all the joys that the trees and flowers can give us.
2
In my opinion, the "landscape garden" or "English
[ 3 ]
NEWS OF SPRING
garden" which is thus abused is a great mistake on the part of
our horticulturists. It is natural, it comes into being spon-
taneously, so to speak, when we can dispose of extensive spaces
that mingle, in a country of hills and groves and rivers, with
the surrounding landscape. It is then just that landscape it-
self, discreetly arranged and corrected "for the pleasure of the
eyes." But it infallibly comes to look false and more or less
absurd so soon as it aims at accumulating, in some poor en-
closure, beauties which exist only by favour of the most serene
lines of the horizon and which are nothing more than space
harmoniously displayed. Let us not forget, besides, that the
"English garden," which is natural or "sub-spontaneous," as
the botanists say, in England, is rather, as we understand it,
of Chinese origin and that there is no art nor taste more im-
penetrable and more hostile to our own than that of China.
3
The garden of the white races, at least the European gar-
den, was always wiser and more logical. Go back as far as
we may, we see it striving to adapt itself to the architectural
schemes that surround it. It continues them, interprets and
completes them. We are able, for instance, thanks to the
[ 4 ]
OUR CITY GARDENS
paintings at Pompeii, nearly to reconstruct the Greek and
Roman gardens :
^^They consist," says Gaston Boissier, "of regular paths,
contained within two hedges of witch-elms and intersecting
one another at right angles. In the centre is usually a sort
of round space with a basin, in which swans float. Little
green arbours have been contrived at intervals, formed of in-
tertwined reeds and covered with vines ; inside these, we see a
marble column or a statue and benches placed all round for
the convenience of strollers. The paintings remind one of
that sentence of Quintilian's which ingeniously expresses the
taste of his time: *Is there anything more beautiful than a
quincunx so arranged that, from whichever side we behold it,
we see straight paths?' "
We find the same arrangement, more or less prominent ac-
cording as it comes before or after the Renascence, in all the
Italian gardens ; and Le Notre's patterned flower-gardens but
revived a tradition that had never quite died out. This tradi-
tion is significant. It was evidently born of a need of har-
mony inherent in our nature. It has always seemed to us
[ 5 ]
NEWS OF SPRING
necessary that that which surrounds our dwelling should par-
take, in some small measure, of its shape and its regularity. It
has always struck us as disagreeable that the featureless plain
or the unkempt forest should begin abruptly at our front-door
or under our window-ledge. A transition was indispensable
and naturally entailed the appropriation of the nearest plants
and their submission to the symmetries of the building.
4
This transition, this traditional harmony, which has been
deliberately disregarded in our towns since the excessive use
of the small English garden,^ is still found here and there in
certain antiquated and almost dead cities, where perfect models
survive of humanized walks and parks. I need not mention
Versailles and other French gardens, whose sylvan decoration
is so closely adapted to the buildings of the three Louis. Nor,
by a stronger reason, need I recall the illustrious gardens of
Italy, whose perfections are so manifest: they contain and con-
tinue their porticoes, columns and balustrades in so insepa-
rable a fashion that this earth, perhaps, possesses nothing more
satisfactory or more stately. But other instances, nearer at
^ For observe that the small English garden, upon a pinch, can provide a setting,
in the open country, for a rustic cottage, but does not harmonize with any other kind
of dwelling.
[ 6 ]
OUR CITY GARDENS
hand and not so splendid, are quite as topical. Carry back
your mind to some little Dutch town, with its canals bordered
by giant espaliered lime-trees and little red houses, gleaming
with mirrors and brass. Think also of the Beguinage at
Bruges, whose simple triangular lawn, planted with a few
trees, or of the Petit Beguinage at Ghent, whose wide rectangu-
lar grassy spaces, lined with old elms and intersected at right
angles by paths that lead to the church, oflPer the most per-
suasive examples of gardens in strict keeping with the appear-
ance of the surrounding houses. At Ghent, in particular, the
proof is the more striking inasmuch as the counter-proof is
easily made. Go to the other end of the town, to what was
once the Beguinage de Sainte-filisabeth : it is now used for
other purposes, but its general architecture has remained al-
most untouched. Though all the indented gables, all the
little green doors of the convents, all those pleasant little pink-
brick walls have remained faithful to their posts, the poor
Beguinage is without soul, without features, without at-
mosphere, without style. Is this because of the departure
of the beguines? Not at all: the little streets in this dying
quarter are almost as deserted now as in the days when the
pious sisters alone gave life to them with their long black
[ 7 ]
NEWS OF SPRING
veils. But, for the plain squares of grass, simple, primitive,
immemorial and bordered with tall, straight poplars, the au-
thorities have substituted a sort of vulgar and pretentious Pare
Monceau, which would be lordly and is positively shabby.
The necessary harmony between houses and trees has ceased
to exist; and one of the most delightful memories of former
days disappears with it.
You will find many other horticultural errors at Ghent,
a city which has been too actively and somewhat recklessly
tampered with. For instance, between Saint-Bavon and the
Chateau de Gerard de Diable there is a fairly large open space,
which the authorities have turned into the inevitable English
square. The effect of its sickly, exotic and anomalous green-
ery against the austere and mighty background of the cathe-
dral is childish beyond all dispute. Would not a humble
grass-plot, planted with Lombardy poplars, have better re-
spected the harmony that we expect to find between the stones
and plants; or else the old-fashioned Flemish mall, peopled
regularly with big, round, comely, bunchy lime-trees? These,
moreover, do not in any way exclude floral ornamentation,
provided that the latter follows the general and familiar move-
ment of the grass and the shade.
[ 8 ]
OUR CITY GARDENS
5
It will, perhaps, be said that this harmony is easy
enough to realize when we have to do with styles of architec-
ture so marked as are those of the French seventeenth- and
eighteenth-century elevations or of the Dutch and Flemish
houses. But, in the presence of our modern five- or six-
storied buildings, in which all the styles mingle and clash,
what relations are we to establish between their incessant con-
tradictions and the unfortunate garden that has to agree with
them? This is just the problem which people have hardly
studied, which I do not pretend to solve, but to which I would
simply call the attention of those who hold in their hands the
grace, the beauty, the charm and the health of our large towns.
6
Everybody knows the Pare Monceau. In the eyes
of many people, it constitutes the most perfect and
luxurious type of the urban garden. Thanks to its extent,
which is quite exceptional and but rarely found in the
centre of a town, it shows us the English garden under its
most advantageous and seductive aspect. There is no doubt
that, with its cool lawns, its ornamental water, its elegant
arcade, its wonderful flower-beds, its wide, undulating, sanded
[ 9 ]
I
NEWS OF SPRING
drives, with their glitter of carriages and cars, the Pare
Monceau gives an undeniable impression of wealth, happiness
and gaiety.
But let us make no mistake : it owes the best part of its
attractions to its very dimensions. Reduce it to half its size
and it will at once become paltry, while the suspicion is con-
firmed that fluttered through us from the first, namely, that
all its surprising charm is rather artificial. It is a strange
and unconvincing setting. It takes no account of the build-
ings that surround it nor of the style of the tall streets amongst
which it opens. For the rest, this is the fault which we most
readily forgive it; but it is guilty of an incomparably graver
fault in fulfilling but two or three of its duties as a garden.
It thinks only of making a vain-glorious display with lawns
and walks that are almost bare. Now, in the desert of brick
and stone, a garden should be not only a carpet of green velvet,
but an oasis of coolness, silence and shade, things above all
others dear and indispensable to the inhabitants of towns and
obtainable only through the incessant, manifold, leafy intru-
sion of big trees.
7
Could not an intermediary type be found be-
[ lo]
OUR CITY GARDENS
tween the French garden (that of the Tuileries, for in-
stance), which conforms to the lines of certain streets,
but is too bare and too sparingly shaded, and the Eng-
glish garden, which is also none too shady and which breaks
up disagreeably the symmetry of our towns? If the Pare
Monceau were planted with great clusters of elms, pines,
limes, plane-trees or chestnut-trees, tall, close-set, dark, thick,
almost cubical, and intersected by wide, clear-cut, rcguar ave-
nues, all leading to a large lake, would it display to less ad-
vantage the luxury that drives through it and would it lose
any of its charm for bestowing upon it some little air of
gravity, peace and meditation?
What we can thus imagine in connection with the most
successful of English gardens thrusts itself upon us with much
greater cogency the moment we have to do with those little
city parks the extent of which is no longer large enough to
extenuate their absurdities. The great fault, the great mis-
take of all our municipal gardeners is their dread of the tree.
They seem to forget that, at the bottom of man's heart, amid
his obscurest, but most powerful instincts, reigns his bound-
less yearning for the primordial forest. You really abuse the
innocence and the credulity of the town-dweller by offering
[ " ]
NEWS OF SPRING
him, instead of the heavy shadows for which his nature longs,
paltry clumps of verdure, flowers in rows and worn-out grass
that reminds him but too closely of the threadbare carpet of
the bedroom whence he has just escaped in vain. A surface
of a quarter of an acre thus arranged is nothing more than a
wretched, dusty hearth-rug. Plant it with beautiful trees,
not parsimoniously spaced, as though each of them were a bit
of bric-a-brac on a tray of grass, but close together, like the
ranks of a friendly army in order of battle. They will then
act as they were wont to act in the native forest. Trees never
feel themselves really trees nor perform their duty until they
are there in numbers. Then, at once, everything is trans-
formed: sky and light recover their first deep meaning, dew
and shade return, peace and silence once more find a sanct-
uary.
8
One could vary the appearance of these refuges in-
finitely, according to the needs or counsels of the spot
and the surroundings. Here, among these low houses,
we would have a square of lime-trees, matronly, round
and plump, placid, full-blown, imperturbably green and all
[ 12]
AN OLD GARDEN
of these
plump, y
OUR CITY GARDENS
a-hum with bees. Yonder, where the house-fronts are richer
and more regular, would be a square of chestnut-trees, whose
opulent, heavy, thick, almost black tresses would droop to
a man's height. Further still, among those pillared man-
sions, would stand an open space crowded with plane-trees;
but I do not mean the plane-tree handled as we mishandle
it in our northern countries, where we know nothing of its
beauty. I mean the plane-tree of the towns and villages
of the South, where they pollard it when it reaches twelve or
fifteen feet in height. They thus obtain enormous, massive,
thickset trunks, splendidly scaled with gold and oxydized cop-
per, which, at one time, as in the Cours Mirabeau at Aixen-
Provence, dart forcibly towards the sky to create fairy-like
plumed naves in the blue and, at another, as in the Alices
d'Azemar at Draguignan, weave a low vault, magical and
cool as a submarine grotto, through which the sun can hardly
contrive to slip a stray crystal dart that breaks in dazzling
shivers on the flagstones.
9
Let us not forget the hornbeam, which is so docile, nor
its brother the elm, nor the beech: all three are ex-
c 15 ]
NEWS OF SPRING
cellent for peopling a space in which the sky is f ree^
that is to say, where we need not hesitate lest we should darken
the windows of houses that are too near. Let us not forget
either the Lombardy poplar, which is our cypress of the
North and almost indispensable in our towns to mark a flight,
here and there, towards space; besides, especially in our Flem-
ish cities, we could hardly fill the poplar's place when it comes
to bordering certain canals, marking the outline of a long
meadow or guarding the entrance to an old house.
I will not concern myself with the acacia, formerly too
much employed, which is frail, sickly and poor in leaf; nor
with the oak, which is too slow, uncertain and unequal. But
a tree which, to my mind, has been unjustly proscribed is the
pine. I do not speak of the umbrella-pine, the noblest of the
conifers and one of the purest glories of the world of plants.
We must do without it, as without the cypress and the divine
laurel-tree, in our northern cities, whose climate they could
not support. The tree which I have in mind is the simple
forest pine of our home woods. If you care to behold the
effect which a square would produce planted exclusively with
those wonderful trees, go to the country round Rouen, for
instance, to the old forest domains of Bretonne or Roumare,
[ i6]
OUR CITY GARDENS
and see the august fairy-scene enacted day and night in the
heart of the spaces reserved to them. Whether it be under
the sun or by moonlight, under the blazing rays of summer
or the snows of winter, you can picture nothing to compare
with the cathedral alignment of the innumerous shafts,
shooting towards the sky, smooth, inflexible, pure, more tightly
packed than the lictors' bundle and yet happy, independent
and full of health and strength, from the warm and russet
glow at their base to the blue, unreal, ethereal mist that crowns
their top.
lO
Thus, in addition to the effective and necessary re-
minder of the forest, each of us, whether in the spacious
mall or at the humble cross-roads, would find that
quality of silence, perfume, meditation and shade which
he prefers. There is, in fact, no lover of the great woods
but knows that each group, each family of trees is mute
in a different fashion and spreads a peace and a silence which
we can recognize without having to raise our eyes; for the
flavour of a shadow is as particular and pronounced as that
of a ripe fruit.
[17]
NEWS OF SPRING
II
I notice, as I concludes these pages, that I have not
spoken, as I intended to do, of the trees and shrubs with
persistent leaves, the evergreens, as the English so aptly
call them. Why have they been almost entirely neglected?
Judiciously chosen, they might constitute the permanent de-
light of our cities burdened with six months of winter. The
yew, for instance, is hardly to be found to-day. It is ac-
counted, very wrongly, a sad and funereal tree, whereas I
have so often seen it lend itself to the most harmonious and
cheerful decorations! On the other hand, certain kinds of
very robust laurels resist the worst frosts and keep up in De-
cember all the gladness and freshness of spring. Lastly, I
should have liked to say a word on the plantations along our
boulevards, so municipal, so contemptible, so sadly in keep-
ing with the street-lamps, whereas one can imagine double
and treble arches of foliage, magnificent summer bowers, lead-
ing to splashing fountains, to shimmering basins of light.
But these points should form the object of a special study.
[ i8]
THE INTELLIGENCE OF THE FLOWERS
[ 19]
THE INTELLIGENCE OF THE FLOWERS
I
1WISH merely to recall here a few facts known to every
botanist. I have made not a single discovery; and my
modest contribution is confined td a few elementary ob-
servations. I need hardly say that I have no intention of re-
viewing all the proofs of intelligence which the plants give us.
These proofs are innumerable and continual, especially among
the flowers, in which the struggle of vegetable life towards
light and understanding is concentrated.
Though there be plants and flowers that are awkward or
unlucky, there is none that is wholly devoid of wisdom and in-
genuity. All exert themselves to accomplish their work, all
have the magnificent ambition to overrun and conquer the sur-
face of the globe by endlessly multiplying that form of ex-
istence which they represent. To attain this object, they have,
because of the law that chains them to the soil, to overcome
difficulties much greater than those opposed to the increase
of the animals. And therefore the majority of them have re-
course to combinations, to mechanical contrivances, to traps,
[ 21 ]
NEWS OF SPRING
which, in regard to such matters as machinery, ballistics,
aerial navigation and the observation of insects, have often
anticipated the inventions and acquirements of man.
It would be superfluous once more to trace the picture
of the great systems of floral fertilization: the play of
stamens and pistil, the seduction of perfumes, the appeal
of harmonious and dazzling colours, the concoction of
nectar, which is absolutely useless to the flower and is manu-
factured only to attract and retain the liberator from with-
out, the messenger of love — bee, humble-bee, fly, butterfly or
moth — that shall bring to the flower the kiss of the distant, in-
visible, motionless lover. . . .
This vegetable world, which to us appears so placid, so
resigned, in which all seems acquiescence, silence, obedience,
meditation, is, on the contrary, that in which impatience, the
revolt against destiny are the most vehement and stubborn.
The essential organ, the nutrient organ of the plant, its root,
attaches it indissolubly to the soil. If it be difficult to dis-
cover among the great laws that oppress us that which weighs
heaviest upon our shoulders, in the case of the plant there is
[ 22]
SYCAMORE AND MOTHS
if 4^
of harr
lacture^...
)Ut, the messenger
of flora i
i, the seduction
nd dazzling colours,
i^ J useless to thv. i.wv>v,L .did is manu-
• retain the liberator from with-
)ee, humble-bee, fly, butterfly or
aitr
moth — that shall^nu^t
visible,
less lo-
iable v>
hirh tn u
; CJ^ij^IltV! -
v>nich aL
meditati
. . '
icit ill wlncn iin\
revolt ?
iestm}
>e most vehemen
fhe es^
rgan, the
nutrien
attaches it indi^solublv t^ the soil. T
cover iirnn!. ' \:\t on.
l. ^2 J
'^'t%"^%
-^^^
'^
%
'*''*,%•.
INTELLIGENCE OF FLOWERS
no doubt: it is the law that condemns it to immobility from
its birth to its death. Therefore it knows better than we, who
disseminate our efforts, against what to rebel first of all. And
the energy of its fixed idea, mounting from the darkness of
the roots to become organized and fullblown in the flower, is
an incomparable spectacle. It exerts itself wholly with one
sole aim : to escape above from the fatality below, to evade, to
transgress the heavy and sombre law, to set itself free, to shat-
ter the narrow sphere, to invent or invoke wings, to escape as
far as it can, to conquer the space in which destiny encloses
it, to approach another kingdom, to penetrate into a moving
and active world. ... Is the fact that it attains its ob-
ject not as surprising as though we were to succeed in living
outside the time which a different destiny assigns to us or in
making our way into a universe freed from the weightiest laws
of matter? We shall see that the flower sets man a gigantic
example of insubordination, courage, perseverance and in-
genuity. If we had applied to the removal of various neces-
sities that crush us, such as pain, old age and death, one half
of the energy displayed by any little flower in our gardens, we
may well believe that our lot would be very different from
what it is.
[ 25 ]
NEWS OF SPRING
3
This need of movement, this craving for space, among the
greater number of plants, is manifested in both the flower
and the fruit. It is easily explained in the fruit, or, in any
case, discloses only a less complex experience and foresight.
Contrary to that which takes place in the animal kingdom
and because of the terrible law of absolute immobility, the
chief and worst enemy of the seed is the paternal stock. We
are in a strange world, where the parents, unable to move from
place to place, know that they are condemned to starve
or stifle their offspring. Every seed that falls at the foot of
the tree or plant is either lost or doomed to sprout in wretched-
ness. Hence the immense effort to throw off the yoke and
conquer space. Hence the marvellous systems of dissemina-
tion, of propulsion, of navigation of the air which we find
on every side in the forest and the plain: among others, to
mention, in passing, but a few of the most curious, the aerial
screw or samara of the Maple; the bract of the Lime-tree; the
flying-machine of the Thistle, the Dandelion and the Salsify;
the detonating springs of the Spurge; the extraordinary squirt
of the Momordica; the hooks of the eriophilous plants; and
a thousand other unexpected and astounding pieces of mech-
[ 26]
INTELLIGENCE OF FLOWERS
anism; for there is not, so to speak, a single seed but has
invented for its sole use a complete method of escaping from
the maternal shade.
It would, in fact, be impossible, if one had not practised
a little botany, to believe the expenditure of imagination and
genius in all the verdure that gladdens our eyes. Consider,
for instance, the pretty seed-pipkin of the Scarlet Pimpernel,
the five valves of the Balsam, the five bursting capsules of the
Geranium. Do not forget, upon occasion, to examine the
common Poppy-head, which we find at any herbalist's. This
good, big head shelters a prudence and a foresight that de-
serve the highest praise. We know that it holds thousands
of tiny black seeds. Its object is to scatter this seed as dexter-
ously and to as great a distance as possible. If the capsule
containing it were to split, to fall or to open underneath, the
precious black dust would form but a useless heap at the foot
of the maternal stalk. But its only outlet is through apertures
contrived right at the top of the capsule, which, when ripe,
bends over on its peduncle, sways like a censer at the least
breath of wind and literally sows the seeds in space, with the
very action employed by the sower.
Shall I speak of the seeds which provide for their dissemi-
[ 27]
NEWS OF SPRING
nation by birds and which, to entice them, as in the case of
the Mistletoe, the Juniper, the Mountain-ash, lurk inside a
sweet husk? We see here displayed such a powerful reason-
ing faculty, such a remarkable understanding of final causes
that we hardly dare dwell upon the subject, for fear of repeat-
ing the ingenuous mistakes of Bernardin de Saint-Pierre.
And yet the facts can be no otherwise explained. The sweet
husk is of no more use to the seed than the nectar, which at-
tracts the bees, is to the flower. The bird eats the fruit be-
cause it is sweet and, at the same time, swallows the seed,
which is indigestible. He flies away and, soon after, ejects
the seed in the same condition in which he has received it,
but stripped of its case and ready to sprout far from the at-
tendant dangers of its birthplace.
4
But let us return to simpler contrivances. Pluck a blade
of grass by the roadside, from the first tuft that offers, and
you will perceive an independent, indefatigable, unexpected
little intelligence at work. Here, for instance, are two poor
creeping plants which you have met a thousand times on
your walks, for we find them in every spot, down to the most
[ 28 ]
INTELLIGENCE OF FLOWERS
ungrateful corners to which a pinch of mould has strayed.
They are two varieties of wild Lucern or Medick [Med-
icago), two "ill weeds" in the humblest sense of the word.
One bears a reddish flower, the other a little yellow ball the
size of a pea. To see them crawling and hiding among the
proud grasses, one would never suspect that, long before the
illustrious geometrician and chemist of Syracuse, they had
discovered the Archimedean screw and endeavoured to apply
it not to the raising of liquids, but to the art of flying. They
lodge their seeds in delicate spirals, with three or four con-
volutions, admirably constructed to delay their fall and, con-
sequently, with the help of the wind, to prolong their jour-
ney through the air. One of them, the yellow, has even
improved upon the apparatus of the red by furnishing the
edges of the spiral with a double row of spikes, with the evi-
dent intention of hooking it, on its passage, to either the clothes
of the pedestrians or the fleece of the animals. It clearly
hopes to add the advantages of eriophily — that is to say the
dissemination of seed by sheep, goats, rabbits and so on — to
those of anemophily, or dissemination by the wind.
The most touching side of this great effort is its futility.
The poor red and yellow Lucerns have blundered. Their re-
[ 29]
NEWS OF SPRING
markable screws are of no use to them: they could act only
if they fell from a certain height, from the top of some lofty
tree or tall Graminea; but, constructed as they are on the level
of the grass, they have hardly taken a quarter of a turn before
already they touch the ground. We have here a curious in-
stance of the mistakes, the gropings, the experiments and the
frequent little miscalculations of nature; for only those who
have studied nature but very little will maintain that she
never errs.
Let us observe, in passing, that other varieties of the
Lucern (not to speak of the Clover, another papilionaceous
Leguminosa, almost identical with that of which we are now
speaking) have not adopted this flying apparatus, but keep to
the primitive methods of the pod. In one of them, the
Medicago aurantiaca, we very clearly perceive the transition
from the twisted pod to the screw. Another variety, the
Medicago scutellata, or Snail-medick, rounds its screw in the
form of a ball and so on. It would seem, therefore, that we
are assisting at the fascinating spectacle of a sort of work of
invention, at the attempts of a family that has not yet settled
its destiny and is seeking for the best way to ensure its future.
Was it not, perhaps, in the course of this search that, having
[30]
INTELLIGENCE OF FLOWERS
been deceived in the spiral, the yellow Lucern added spikes or
hooks to it, saying to itself, not unreasonably, that, since its
leaves attract the sheep, it is inevitable and right that the sheep
should assume the care of its progeny? And, lastly, is it not
thanks to this new effort and to this happy thought that the
Lucern with the yellow flowers is infinitely more widely dis-
tributed than its sturdier cousin whose flowers are red?
5
It is not only in the seed or the flower, but in the whole
plant, leaves, stalks and roots, that we discover, if we stoop
for a moment over their humble work, many traces of a pru-
dent and quick intelligence. Think of the magnificent strug-
gle towards the light of the thwarted branches, or the ingen-
ious and courageous strife of trees in danger. As for my-
self, I shall never forget the admirable example of heroism
given me the other day in Provence, in the wild and delightful
Gorges du Loup, all fragrant with violets, by a huge, cen-
tenarian Laurel-tree. It was easy to read on its twisted and,
so to speak, writhing trunk the whole drama of its hard and
tenacious life. A bird or the wind, masters of destiny both,
had carried the seed to the flank of the rock, which was as
[31 ]
NEWS OF SPRING
perpendicular as an iron curtain; and the tree was born there,
two hundred yards above the torrent, inaccessible and solitary,
among the burning and barren stones. From the first hour,
it had sent its blind roots on a long and painful search for
precarious water and soil. But this was only the native
anxiety of a species that knows the aridity of the South. The
young stem had to solve a much graver and more unexpected
problem: it started from a vertical plane, so that its top, in-
stead of rising towards the sky, bent down over the gulf. It
was obliged, therefore, notwithstanding the increasing weight
of its branches, to correct the first flight, stubbornly to bend
its disconcerted trunk in the form of an elbow close to the
rock and thus, like a swimmer who throws back his head, by
means of incessant will-power, tension and contraction to hold
its heavy crown of leaves straight up into the sky.
Thenceforward, all the preoccupations, all the energy,
all the free and conscious genius of the plant had centred
around that vital knot. The monstrous, hypertrophied elbow
revealed, one by one, the successive solicitudes of a kind of
thought that knew how to profit by the warning which it re-
ceived from the rains and the storms. Year by year, the leafy
dome grew heavier, with no other care than to expand in the
[32 ]
INTELLIGENCE OF FLOWERS
light and heat, while a hidden canker gnawed deep into the
tragic arm that supported it in space. Then, obeying I know
not what instinctive promptings, two stout roots, two fibrous
cables, issuing from the trunk at more than two feet above
the elbow, had come to moor it to the granite wall. Had they
really been evoked by the tree's distress or were they perhaps
waiting providently, from the first day, for the acute hour of
danger, in order to increase the value of their assistance?
Was it only a happy accident? What human eye will ever
assist at these silent dramas, which are all too long for our
brief lives? ^
Among the vegetals that give the most striking proofs
of intelligence and initiative, the plants which might be de-
scribed as ^^animated" or ^^sentient" deserve to be studied in
detail. I will do no more than recall the delightful tremors
of the Sensitive-plant, the shrinking Mimosa with which we
1 Let us compare with this the act of intelligence of another root, whose exploits
are related by Brandis in his Ueber Leben und Polaritdt. In penetrating into the earth,
it had come upon an old boot-sole: in order to cross this obstacle, which, apparently, the
root was the first of its kind to meet upon its road, it subdivided itself into as many
parts as there were holes made in the sole by the cobbler's awl ; then, when the obstacle
was overcome, it joined together and once more united all its divided radicles into a
single homogeneous tap-root.
[ 33 ]
NEWS OF SPRING
are all acquainted. There are other herbs endowed with
spontaneous movements that are not so well-known, notably
the Hedysarece, among which the Hedysarum gyrans, or Mov-
ing-plant, behaves in the most restless and surprising fashion.
This little Leguminosa, which is a native of Bengal, but often
cultivated in our hothouses, performs a sort of perpetual and
intricate dance in honour of the light. Its leaves are divided
into three folioles, one wide and terminal, the two others nar-
row and planted at the base of the first. Each of these leaflets
is animated with a different movement of its own. They live
in a state of rhythmical, almost chronometrical and continuous
agitation. They are so sensitive to light that their dance flags
or quickens according as the clouds veil or uncover that cor-
ner of the sky which they contemplate. They are, as we see,
real photometers; and this long before Crook^s discovery of
the natural ctheoscopes.
7
But these plants, to which should be added the Droseras,
the Dionaeas and many others, are nervous plants that already
go a little beyond the mysterious and probably imaginary ridge
that separates the vegetable from the animal kingdom. It is
[ 34]
INTELLIGENCE OF FLOWERS
not necessary to seek so high; and we find as much intelligence
and almost as much visible spontaneity at the other end of
the world which we are considering, in the shallows where
the plant is hardly to be distinguished from clay or stone.
We have here the fabulous class of the Cryptogamia, which
can be studied only under the microscope, for which reason
we will pass it by in silence, although the work of the sporules
of the Mushrooms, Ferns and Horse-tails is incomparable in
its delicacy and ingenuity. But, among the aquatic plants,
the inhabitants of the original ooze and mud, we can see less
secret marvels performed. As the fertilization of their flow-
ers cannot be effected under water, each of them has thought
out a different system to allow of the dry dissemination of the
pollen. Thus, the Zosteras, that is to say, the common Sea-
wrack with which we stuff our bedding, carefully enclose their
flower in a regular diving-bell; and the Water-lilies send
theirs to blossom on the surface of the pond, supporting and
feeding it at the top of an endless stalk, which lengthens as
the level of the water rises. The Villersia nymphoides, having
no expanding stalk, simply releases its flowers, which rise and
burst like bubbles. The Trapa natans, or Water-caltrop, sup-
plies them with a sort ©f inflated bladder: they shoot up and
[35 ]
NEWS OF SPRING
open. Then, when the fertilization is accomplished, the air
in the bladder is replaced by a mucilaginous fluid, heavier
than the water, and the whole apparatus sinks back again to
the slime in which the fruits will ripen.
The method of the Utricularia is even more complicated.
M. Henri Bocquillon describes it in his Vie des Plantes:
**These plants, which are common in ponds, ditches, pools
and the puddles of peat-bogs, are not visible in winter, when
they lie on the mud. Their long, slim, trailing stalk is fur-
nished with leaves reduced to ramified filaments. At the axilla
of the leaves thus transformed, we see a sort of little pyriform
pocket with an aperture at its pointed upper end. This aper-
ture has a valve, which can be opened only from the outside
inwards; its edges are provided with ramified hairs; the inside
of the pocket is covered with other little secretory hairs which
give it the appearance of velvet. When the moment of efflo-
rescence has come, the axillary utricles fill with air: the more
this air tends to escape, the more tightly it closes the valve.
The result is that it imparts a great specific buoyancy to the
plant and carries it to the surface of the water. Not
till then do those charming little yellow flowers come into
[36]
INTELLIGENCE OF FLOWERS
blossom, resembling quaint little mouths with more or less
swollen lips and palates streaked with orange or rust-red lines.
During the months of June, July and August, they display
their bright colours amid the vegetable decay around them,
while rising gracefully above the muddy water. But
fertilization has been effected, the fruit develops, the action
is reversed : the ambient water presses upon the valve of the
utricles, forces it in, rushes into the cavity, weighs down the
plant and compels it to descend to the mud again."
Is it not interesting to see thus gathered in this immemo-
rial little apparatus some of the most fruitful and most recent
human inventions: the play of valves or plugs, the pressure
of fluids and the air, the Archimedean principle studied and
turned to account? As the author whom we have just quoted
observes, "the engineer who first attached a rafting apparatus
to a sunken ship little thought that a similar process had been
in use for thousands of years." In a world which we believe
unconscious and destitute of intelligence, we begin by imagin-
ing that the least of our ideas creates new combinations and
relations. When we come to look into things more closely, it
appears infinitely probable that it is impossible for us to create
[ 37 ]
I
NEWS OF SPRING
anything whatsoever. We are the last comers on this earth,
we simply find what has always existed and, like wonderstruck
children, we travel again the road which life had travelled
before us. For that matter, it is very natural and comfort-
ing that this should be so. But we will return to this point.
8
We must not leave the aquatic plants without briefly
mentioning the life of the most romantic of them all: the
legendary Vallisneria, an hydrocharad whose nuptials form
the most tragic episode in the love-history of the flowers.
The Vallisneria is a rather insignificant herb, possessing none
of the strange grace of the Water-lily or of certain submersed
verdant tresses. But it would seem as though nature had de-
lighted in imbuing it with a beautiful idea. Its whole ex-
istence is spent at the bottom of the water, in a sort of half-
slumber, until dawns the wedding-hour, when it aspires to a
new life. Then the female plant slowly uncoils its long pedun-
cular spiral, rises, emerges and floats and blossoms on the
surface of the pond. From a neighbouring stem, the male
flowers, which see it through the sunlit water, rise in their
turn, full of hope, towards the one that rocks, that awaits them,
[38]
INTELLIGENCE OF FLOWERS
that calls them to a fairer world. But, when they have come
half-way, they feel themselves suddenly held back: their stalk,
the very source of their life, is too short; they will never
reach the abode of light, the only spot in which the union of
the stamens and the pistil can be achieved!
Is there any more cruel inadvertence or ordeal in nature?
Picture the tragedy of that longing, the inaccessible so nearly
attained, the transparent fatality, the impossible with not a
visible obstacle! ... It would be insoluble, like our own
tragedy upon this earth, were it not that an unexpected ele-
ment is mingled with it Did the males foresee the disap-
pointment with which they would meet? One thing is cer-
tain, that they have locked in their hearts a bubble of air,
even as we lock in our souls a thought of desperate de-
liverance. It is as though for a moment they hesitated ; then,
with a magnificent effort, the finest, the most supernatural
that I know of in all the pageantry of the insects and the
flowers, in order to rise to happiness they deliberately break
the bond that attaches them to life. They tear themselves
from their stalk and, with an incomparable flight, amid bub-
bles of gladness, their petals dart up and break the surface of
the water. Wounded to death, but radiant and free, they float
[39]
NEWS OF SPRING
for a moment beside their heedless brides and the union is
accomplished, whereupon the victims drift away to perish,
while the wife, already a mother, closes her corolla, in which
lives their last breath, rolls up her spiral and descends to the
depths, there to ripen the fruit of the heroic kiss.
Must we spoil this charming picture, which is strictly
accurate, but seen from the side of the light, by looking at
it also from the shadow? Why not? There are sometimes
on the shady side truths quite as interesting as those on the
bright. This delightful tragedy is perfect only when we
consider the intelligence and the aspirations of the species.
But, when we observe the individuals in this ideal plan, we
shall often see them act awkwardly and without rhyme or
reason. At one time, the male flowers will ascend to the sur-
face when there are not yet any pistilled flowers near. At
another, when the low water would permit them easily to
join their companions, they will nevertheless mechanically and
needlessly break their stalks. We here once more establish the
fact that all genius lies in the species, in life or in nature,
whereas the individual is nearly always stupid. In man alone
does a real emulation exist between the two intelligences, a
more and more precise, more and more active tendency to-
[40]
INTELLIGENCE OF FLOWERS
wards a sort of equilibrium which is the great secret of our
future.
The parasitic plants, again, present a curious and crafty
spectacle, as in the case of that astonishing Cuscuta commonly
called the Dodder. It has no leaves; and no sooner has its
stalk attained a few inches in length than it voluntarily aban-
dons its roots to twine about its chosen victim, into which it
digs its suckers. Thenceforth, it lives exclusively upon its
prey. Its perspicacity is not to be deceived; it will refuse
any support that does not please it and will go some distance,
if necessary, in search of the stem of Hemp, Hop, Lucern or
Flax that suits its temperament and its taste.
This Cuscuta naturally calls our attention to the Creep-
ers, which have very remarkable habits and which deserve a
word to themselves. Those of us who have lived a little in the
country have often had occasion to admire the instinct, the
sort of power of vision, that directs the tendrils of the Vir-
ginia Creeper or the Convolvulus towards the handle of a
rake or spade leaning against a wall. Move the rake and,
the next day, the tendril will have turned completely round
[41 ]
NEWS OF SPRING
and found it again. Schopenhauer, in his treatise Ueber den
Willen in der Natur, in the chapter devoted to the physiology
of plants, recapitulates on this point and on many others a host
of observations and experiments which it would take too long
to set out here. I therefore refer the reader to this chapter,
where he will find numerous sources and references mentioned.
Need I add that, in the past sixty or seventy years, these
sources have been strangely multiplied and that, moreover,
the subject is almost inexhaustible?
Among so many different inventions, artifices and pre-
cautions, let us quote also, by way of example, the foresight
displayed by the Hyoseris radiata, or Starry Swine's-succory,
a little yellow-flowered plant, not unlike the Dandelion and
often found on old walls along the Riviera. In order to en-
sure both the dissemination and the stability of its race, it
bears at one and the same time two kinds of seeds: the first
are easily detached and are furnished with wings wherewith
to abandon themselves to the wind, while the others have no
wings, remain captive in the inflorescence and are set free only
when the flowers decay.
The case of the Xanthium spinosum, or Spiny Xanthium,
shows us how well-conceived and effective certain systems of
[ 42 ]
INTELLIGENCE OF FLOWERS
dissemination can be. This Xanthium is a hideous weed, bris-
tling with savage prickles. Not long ago, it was unknown in
Western Europe and no one, naturally, had dreamt of accli-
matizing it. It owes its conquest to the hooks which finish off
the capsules of its fruits and which cling to the fleece of the
animals. A native of Russia, it came to us in bales of wool
imported from the distant steppes of Muscovy; and one might
follow on the map the stages of this great emigrant which has
annexed a new world.
The Silene Italica, or Italian Catchfly, a simple little
white flower, found in abundance under the olive-trees, has
set its thought working in another direction. Apparently very
timorous, very susceptible, to avoid the visits of importunate
and indelicate insects it furnishes its stalks with glandular
hairs, whence oozes a viscid fluid in which the parasites are
caught with such success that the peasants of the South use
the plant as a fly-catcher in their houses. Certain kinds of
Catchflies, moreover, have ingeniously simplified the system.
Dreading the ants in particular, they discovered that it was
enough to place a wide viscid ring under the node of each
stalk in order to ward them off. This is exactly what our
gardeners do when they draw a circle of tar around the
[43 ]
NEWS OF SPRING
trunk of the apple-trees to stop the ascent of the caterpillars.
This leads to the study of the defensive means employed
by the plants. In an excellent popular work, Les Plantes
originales, to which I refer the reader who wishes for fuller
details, M. Henri Coupin examines some of these quaint and
startling weapons. We have first the captivating question of
the thorns, concerning which M. Lothelier, a student at the
Sorbonne, has made a number of interesting experiments, re-
sulting in the conclusion that shade and damp tend to suppress
the prickly parts of the plants. On the other hand, whenever
the place in which it grows is dry and scorched by the sun, the
plant bristles and multiplies its spikes, as though it felt that,
as almost the sole survivor among the rocks or in the hot sand,
it is called upon to make a mighty effort to redouble its de-
fences against an enemy that no longer has a choice of victims
to prey upon. It is a remarkable fact, moreover, that, when
cultivated by man, most of the thorny plants gradually lay
aside their weapons, leaving the care of their safety to the
supernatural protector who has adopted them in his fenced
grounds.^
^ Among the plants that have ceased to defend themselves, the most striking case is
that of the Lettuce:
"In its wild state," says the above-mentioned author, "if we break a stalk or a
leaf, we see a white juice exude from it, the latex, a substance formed of diflFerent mat-
[44]
VENUS FLY-TRAP
pin examines son.
sifUing \^K We have first the capii
the;thor. ing which M. Lothclier, a
nade a number of interesting
sultin c conclusion that shade and damp tend to suppress
tiic P .arts of the plants. On the other hand, whenever
the pia Hi which it grows is dry and scorched by the sun, the
plant bristles and multiplies its spikes, as though it felt that,
as almost the sole sv x^WiiS ^^^^^ or in the hot sknd,
it is called upon to mighty effort to re
fences aa-ainst an enc ) longer has a choice
to |.,.. .pon. It is a able far . -r, tiiat, when
cultivated by man, mo )e thorny plants gradually lay
aside their weapons, leavmg the care of their saf
supernatural protector ^s adopted them in his fenced
grounds.*
» Almong the pfants that have ceised tt> defend themselves, the OKMt strlkini? ca^e is
of the L€
•'In It* vii... ->., t. says uic auove-rnentiancd author, "if we break .< «aik of .
\ we see * white juice exude from it, the iatex, a substance formed of dr^rrmt n,
[44]
INTELLIGENCE OF FLOWERS
Certain plants, among others the Boraginece, supply the
place of thorns with very hard bristles. Others, such as the
Nettle, add poison. Others, the Geranium, the Mint, the
Rue, steep themselves in powerful odours to keep off the ani-
mals. But the strangest are those which defend themselves
mechanically. I will mention only the Horsetail, which sur-
rounds itself with a veritable armour of microscopic grains
of silex. Moreover, almost all the Graminea, in order to
discourage the gluttony of the slugs and snails, add lime to
their tissues.
lo
Before entering upon the study of the complicated forms
of apparatus rendered necessary by cross-fertilization, among
the thousands of nuptial ceremonies that prevail in our gar-
dens let us mention the ingenious ideas of some very simple
ters which vigorously defend the plant against the attacks of the slugs. On the other
hand, in the cultivated species derived from the former, the latex is almost missing,
for which reason the plant, to the despair of the gardeners, is no longer able to resist
and allows the slugs to eat it."
It is nevertheless right to add that this latex is rarely lacking except in the young
plants, whereas it becomes quite abundant when the Lettuce begins to "cabbage" and
when it runs to seed. Now it is at the commencement of its life, at the budding of
its first, tender leaves, that the plant most needs to defend itself. One is inclined to
think that the cultivated Lettuce loses its head a little, so to speak, and no longer knows
exactly where it stands.
[47]
NEWS OF SPRING
flowers, in which the grooms and brides are born, love and
die in the same corolla. The characteristics of the system are
well enough known: the stamens, or male organs, generally
frail and numerous, are grouped around the robust and pa-
tient pistil. As the great Linnaeus so delightfully says,
^'Mariti et uxores uno eodemque thalamo gaudentf' But the
distribution, the form, the habits of these organs vary in every
flower, as though nature had a thought that cannot yet be-
come settled, or an imagination that makes it a point of hon-
our never to repeat itself. Often the pollen, when ripe, falls
quite naturally from the top of the stamens upon the pistil;
but very often, also, pistil and stamens are of the same height,
or the latter are too far away, or the pistil is twice as tall as
they. Then come endless efforts to succeed in meeting.
Sometimes, as in the Nettle, the stamens crouch upon their
stalk at the bottom of the corolla : at the moment of fertiliza-
tion, the stalk straightens out like a spring; and the anther,
or pollen mass, that tops it shoots a cloud of dust over the
stigma. Sometimes, as in the Barberry, whose nuptials can
be accomplished only in the bright hours of a cloudless day,
the stamens, far removed from the pistil, are kept against
the sides of the flower by the weight of their moist glands:
[48 ]
INTELLIGENCE OF FLOWERS
the sun appears and evaporates the fluid and the unballasted
stamens dart upon the stigma. Elsewhere are different things
again: thus, in the Primroses, the females are by turns longer
and shorter than the males. In the Lily, the Tulip and other
flowers, the too-lanky bride does the best she can to gather
and fix the pollen. (But the most original and fantastic sys-
tem is that of the Rue {Ruta graveolens) , a rather evil-smell-
ing medicinal herb of the ill-famed emmenagogic tribe. The
peaceful and docile stamens, drawn up in a circle around the
fat, squat pistil, wait expectant in the yellow corolla. At the
conjugal hour, obeying the command of the female, which ap-
parently gives a sort of call by name, one of the males ap-
proaches and touches the stigma. Then come the third, the
fifth, the seventh, the ninth male, until the whole row of odd
numbers has rendered service. Next, in the even ranks, comes
the turn of the second, the fourth, the sixth and so on. This
is indeed love to order! This flower which knows how
to count appears to me so extraordinary that I at first re-
fused to believe the botanists ; and I was determined to test its
numerical sense more than once before accepting it. I
have ascertained positively that it but seldom makes a mis-
take.
[49]
NEWS OF SPRING
It were wearisome to multiply these instances. A stroll
in the woods or fields will allow any one to make a thousand
observations in this direction, each quite as curious as those
related by the botanists. But, before closing this chapter, I
would mention one more flower: not that it displays any re-
markable imagination, but because of the delightful and eas-
ily-perceptible grace of its amorous movement. I allude to
the Nigella Damascena, or Fennel-flower, whose folk-names
are charming: Love-in-a-mist, Devil-in-a-bush, Ragged-lady;
so many happy and touching efforts of popular poetry to de-
scribe a little flower that pleases it. This plant is found in a
wild state in the South, by the roadside and under the olive-
trees, and is often cultivated in the North in old-fashioned
gardens. Its blossom is a pale blue, simple as a floweret in
a primitive painting, and the "Venus' locks" or **ragged locks"
that give the Ragged-lady its popular name in France are the
light, tenuous, tangled leaves that surround the corolla with a
"bush" of misty verdure. At the base of the flower, the five
extremely long pistils stand close-grouped in the centre of the
azure crown, like five queens clad in green robes, haughty and
inaccessible. Around them crowd hopelessly the innumerous
throng of their lovers, the stamens, which do not come up to
[50]
INTELLIGENCE OF FLOWERS
their knees. And now, in the heart of this palace of sapphires
and turquoises, in the gladness of the summer days, begins the
drama without words or catastrophe which one might expect,
the drama of powerless, useless, motionless waiting. But the
hours pass that are the flower's years: its brilliancy fades, its
petals fall and the pride of the great queens seems at last to
bend under the weight of life. At a given moment, as though
obeying the secret and irresistible command of love, which
deems the proof to have lasted long enough, with a concerted
and symmetrical movement, comparable with the harmonious
curves of a fountain with five jets, they all bend backwards to-
gether, stoop and gracefully cull the golden dust of the nuptial
kiss on the lips of their humble lovers.
II
The unexpected abounds here, as we see. A bulky vol-
ume might be written on the intelligence of the plants, even
as Romanes wrote one on animal intelligence. But this sketch
has no pretension to become a manual of that kind; and I wish
only to call attention to a few interesting events that happen
beside us in this world wherein we think ourselves, a little too
vaingloriously, privileged. These events are not selected, but
[ 51 ]
NEWS OF SPRING
taken by way of instances, as the random result of observation
and circumstance. I propose, however, in these short notes, to
concern myself above all with the flower, for it is in the flower
that the greatest marvels shine forth. I set aside, for the mo-
ment, the carnivorous flowers, Droseras, Nepenthes and the
rest, which verge upon the animal kingdom and would de-
mand a special and expansive study, in order to devote myself
to the true flower, the flower proper, which is believed to be
insentient and inanimate.
To separate facts from theories, let us speak of the flower
as though it had foreseen and conceived all that it has realized,
after the manner of men. We shall see later how much we
must concede to it, how much deny it. For the present, let
it take the stage alone, like a splendid princess endowed with
reason and will. There is no denying that it appears to be
provided with both; and to deprive it of either we should
have to resort to very obscure hypotheses. It is there, then,
motionless on its stalk, sheltering in a dazzling tabernacle the
reproductive organs of the plant. Apparently, it has but to
allow the mysterious union of the stamens and pistil to be
consummated in this tabernacle of love. And many flowers
do so consent. But to many others there is propounded, big
[ 52 ]
INTELLIGENCE OF FLOWERS
with awful threats, the normally insoluble problem of cross-
fertilization. As the result of what numberless and immemo-
rial experiments did they observe that self-fertilization — that
is the fertilization of the stigma by the pollen falling from the
anthers that surround it in the same corolla — rapidly induces
the degeneration of the species? They have observed nothing,
we are told, nor profited by any experience. The force of
things, quite simply and little by little, eliminated the seeds
and plants weakened by self-fertilization. Soon, only those
survived which, through some anomaly, such as the exag-
gerated length of the pistil, rendering it inaccessible to the
anthers, were prevented from fertilizing themselves. These
exceptions alone endured, through a thousand accidents;
heredity finally determined the work of chance; and the nor-
mal type disappeared.
12
We shall see presently what light these explanations af-
ford. For the moment, let us stroll into the garden or the
field, to study more closely two or three curious inventions
of the genius of the flower. And already, without going
far from the house, we have here, frequented by the bees, a
[ 53 ]
NEWS OF SPRING
sweet-scented cluster inhabited by a most skilled mechanic.
There is no one, even among the least countrified, but knows
the good Sage. It is an unpretending Lahiata and bears a very
modest flower, which opens violently, like a hungry mouth, to
snatch the passing rays of the sun. For that matter, it pre-
sents a large number of varieties, not all of which — this is a
curious detail — have adopted or carried to the same pitch
of perfection the system of fertilization which we are about
to examine. But I am concerned here only with the most
common Sage, that which, at this moment, as though to cele-
brate spring's passage, covers with violet draperies all the
walls of my terraces of olive-trees. I assure you that the
balconies of the great marble palaces that await the kings were
never more luxuriously, more happily, more fragrantly
adorned. One seems to catch the very perfumes of the light
of the sun at its hottest, when the noon of day strikes. . . .
To come to details, the stigma, or female organ, of the
flower is contained in the upper lip, which forms a sort of
hood, wherein are also the two stamens, or male organs. To
prevent these from fertilizing the stigma which shares the
same nuptial tent, this stigma is twice as long as they, so that
they have no hope of reaching it. Moreover, in order to
[ 54]
INTELLIGENCE OF FLOWERS
avoid any accident, the flower has made itself protenandrous,
that is to say, the stamens ripen before the pistil, so that,
when the female is fit to conceive, the males have already dis-
appeared. It is necessary, therefore, that some outside power
should intervene and accomplish the union by carrying a
foreign pollen to the abandoned stigma. A certain number of
flowers, the anemophilous flowers, leave this care to the wind.
But the Sage — and this is the more general case — is ento-
mophilous, that is to say, it loves insects and relies upon their
collaboration alone. Still, it is quite aware, for it knows
many things, that it lives in a world where it is best to expect
no sympathy, no charitable aid. It does not waste time, there-
fore, in making useless appeals to the courtesy of the bee.
The bee, like all that struggles against death in this world
of ours, exists only for herself and for her kind and is in no way
concerned to render a service to the flowers that feed her.
How, then, shall she be made in spite of herself, or at least
unconsciously, to fulfil her matrimonial office? Observe the
wonderful love-trap contrived by the Sage: right at the back
of its tent of violet silk, it distils a few drops of nectar ; this is
the bait. But, barring the access to the sugary fluid, stand two
parallel stalks, somewhat similar to the uprights of a Dutch
[ 55 ]
NEWS OF SPRING
drawbridge. Right at the top of each stalk is a great sack,
the anther, overflowing with pollen ; at the bottom, two smaller
sacks serve as a counterpoise. When the bee enters the flower,
in order to reach the nectar she has to push the small sacks
with her head. The two stalks, which turn on an axis, at once
topple over and the upper anthers come down and touch the
sides of the insect, whom they cover with fertilizing dust. No
sooner has the bee departed than the pivot-springs fly back
and replace the mechanism in its first position; and all is
ready to repeat the work at the next visit.
However, this is only the first half of the play: the sequel
is enacted in another scene. In a neighbouring flower, whose
stamens have just withered, enters upon the stage the pistil
that awaits the pollen. It issues slowly from the hood, length-
ens out, stoops, curves down, becomes forked so as, in its turn,
to bar the entrance to the tent. As the bee goes to the nectar,
her head passes freely under the hanging fork, which, how-
ever, grazes her back and sides exactly at the spots touched
by the stamens. The two-cleft stigma greedily absorbs the
silvery dust; and impregnation is accomplished. It is easy,
for that matter, by introducing a straw or the end of a match,
to set the apparatus going and to take stock of the striking
[56]
INTELLIGENCE OF FLOWERS
and marvellous combination and precision of all its move-
ments.
The varieties of the Sage are very many — they number
about five hundred — and I will spare you the greater part of
their scientific names, which are not always pretty: Salvia
pratensis, officinalis (our Garden Sage), Horminum, Hormi-
noides, glutinosa, Sclarea, Roemeri, azurea, Pitcheri, splen-
dens (the magnificent Sage of our flower-beds) and so on.
There is not, perhaps, one but has modified some detail of the
machinery which we have just examined A few — and this,
I think, is a doubtful improvement — have doubled and some-
times trebled the length of the pistil, so that it not only emerges
from the hood, but makes a wide plumelike curve in front of
the entrance to the flower. They thus avoid the just-possible
danger of the fertilization of the stigma by the anthers dwell-
ing in the same hood ; but on the other hand, it may happen,
if the protenandry be not strict, that the insect, on leaving the
flower, deposits on the stigma the pollen of the very anthers
with which the stigma cohabits. Others, in the movement of
the lever, make the anthers diverge farther apart, so as to
strike the sides of the animal with greater precision. Others,
lastly, have not succeeded in arranging and adjusting every
[ 57]
NEWS OF SPRING
part of the mechanism. I find, for instance, not far from
my violet Sages, near the well, under a cluster of Oleanders,
a family of white flowers tinted with pale lilac which have
no suggestion or trace of a lever. The stamens and the stigma
are heaped up promiscuously in the middle of the corolla.
All seems left to chance and disorganized.
I have no doubt that it would be possible, to any one col-
lecting the very numerous varieties of this Labiata, to recon-
struct the whole history, to follow all the stages of the inven-
tion, from the primitive disorder of the white Sage under my
eyes to the latest improvements of the Salvia officinalis. What
conclusion are we to draw? Is the system still in the experi-
mental stage among the aromatic tribe? Has it not yet left
the period of models and "trial trips," as in the case of the
Archimedean screw in the Sainfoin family? Has the excel-
lence of the automatic lever not yet been unanimously admit-
ted? Can it be, then, that everything is not immutable and
pre-established; and are they still arguing and experimenting
in this world which we look upon as set in a fatal organic
groove? ^
1 For some years, I have been engaged upon a series of experiments in the hybridiza-
tion of Sages, artificially fertilizing (after taking the usual precautions against any
interference of wind or insects) a variety whose floral mechanism has reached a high
[58]
INTELLIGENCE OF FLOWERS
13
Be this as it may, the flower of most varieties of the Sage
presents an attractive solution of the great problem of cross-
fertilization. But, even as, among men, a new invention is
at once taken up, simplified, perfected by a host of small in-
defatigable seekers, so, in the world of what we may call me-
chanical flowers, the patent of the Sage has been elaborated
and in many details strangely improved. A well-known
Scrophularinea, the common Lousewort, or Red-rattle {Pedi-
cularis sylvatica), which you have surely noticed in the shady
parts of small woods and heaths, has introduced some ex-
tremely ingenious modifications. The shape of the corolla
is almost similar to that of the Sage; the stigma and the two
anthers are all three contained in the upper hood. Only the
little moist tip of the stigma protrudes from the hood, while
state of perfection with the pollen of a very backward variety; and <vice versa. My
observations are not yet sufficiently numerous to enable me to give the details here.
Nevertheless, it appears as if a general law were already being evolved, namely that
the backward Sage readily adopts the improvements of the more advanced variety,
whereas the latter is not so prone to accept the defects of the first. This would tend
to throw an interesting side-light upon the operations, the habits, the preferences, the
tastes of nature at her best. But these are experiments which must of necessity be
slow and long, because of the time lost in collecting the different varieties, because of
the numberless proofs and counter-proofs required and so on. It would be premature,
therefore, as yet to draw the slightest conclusion.
[59]
NEWS OF SPRING
the anthers remain strict captives. In this silky tabernacle,
therefore, the organs of the two sexes are very close together
and even in immediate contact; nevertheless, thanks to an
arrangement quite different from that of the Sage, self-fertili-
zation is utterly impossible. The anthers, in fact, form two
sacks filled with powder; each of the sacks has only one open-
ing and they are juxtaposed in such a way that the openings
coincide and mutually close each other. They are kept forc-
ibly inside the hood, on their curved, springy stalks, by a sort
of teeth. The bee or humble-bee that enters the flower to sip
its nectar necessarily pushes these teeth aside; and the sacks
are no sooner set free than they fly up, are flung outside the
hood and alight upon the back of the insect.
But the genius and foresight of the flower go farther than
this. As Hermann Miiller, who was the first to make a com-
plete study of the wonderful mechanism of the Lousewort,
observes (I am quoting from a summary) :
"If the stamens struck the insect while preserving their
relative positions, not a grain of pollen would leave them, be-
cause their orifices reciprocally close each other. But a con-
trivance which is as simple as it is ingenious overcomes the
[60]
INTELLIGENCE OF FLOWERS
difficulty. The lower lip of the corolla, instead of being sym-
metrical and horizontal, is irregular and slanting, so that one
side of it is higher by a few millimetres than the other. The
humble-bee resting upon it must herself necessarily stand in a
sloping position. The result is that her head strikes first one
and then the other of the projections of the corolla. There-
fore the releasing of the stamens also takes place successively;
and, one after the other, their orifices, now freed, strike the
insect and sprinkle her with fertilizing dust.
"When the humble-bee next passes to another flower, she
inevitably fertilizes it, because — and I have purposely omitted
this detail — what she meets first of all, when thrusting her
head into the entrance to the corolla, is the stigma, which
grazes her just at the spot where she is about, the moment
after, to be struck by the stamens, the exact spot where she has
already been touched by the stamens of the flower which she
has last left."
These instances might be multiplied indefinitely; every
flower has its idea, its acquired experience which it turns to
advantage. When we examine closely their little inventions,
[ 6i ]
NEWS OF SPRING
their diverse methods, we are reminded of those enthralling
exhibitions of machine-tools, of machines for making machin-
ery, in which the mechanical genius of man reveals all its re-
sources. But mechanical genius dates from yesterday,
whereas floral mechanism has been at work for thousands of
years. When the flowers made their appearance upon our
earth, there were no models around them which they could
imitate; they had to derive everything from within them-
selves. At the period when we had not gone beyond the club,
the bow and the battle-flail; in the comparatively recent days
when we conceived the spinning-wheel, the pulley, the tackle,
the ram ; at the time — it was last year, so to speak — when our
master-pieces were the catapult, the clock and the weaving-
loom, the Sage had contrived the uprights and counter-
weights of its lever of precision and the Lousewort its sacks
closed up as though for a scientific experiment, the successive
releasing of its springs and the combination of its inclined
planes. Who, say a hundred years ago, dreamt of the prop-
erties of the screw-propeller which the Maple and the Lime-
tree have been using since the birth of the trees? When shall
we succeed in building a parachute or a flying-machine as
firm, as light, as delicate and as safe as that of the Dandelion?
[ 62 ]
INTELLIGENCE OF FLOWERS
When shall we discover the secret of cutting in so frail a
fabric as the silk of the petals a spring as powerful as that
which projects into space the golden pollen of the Spanish
Broom? As for the Momordica, or Squirting Cucumber,
whose name I mentioned at the beginning of this little study,
who shall tell us the mystery of its miraculous strength? Do
you know the Momordica? It is a humble Cucurbitacea,
common enough along the Mediterranean coast. Its prickly
fruit, which resembles a small cucumber, is endowed with inex-
plicable vitality and energy. You have but to touch it, at the
moment of its maturity, and it suddenly quits its stalk by means
of a convulsive contraction and, through the hole produced by
the wrench, shoots, mmgled with numerous seeds, a mucilagi
nous stream of such wonderful intensity that it carries the seed
to four or five yards' distance from the natal plant. The action
is as extraordinary, in proportion, as though we were to succeed
in emptying ourselves with a single spasmodic movement and
in precipitating all our organs, our viscera and our blood t:;
a distance of half a mile from our skin and skeleton.
A large number of seeds besides have ballistic methods
and employ sources of energy that are more or less unknown
to us. Remember, for instance, the explosions of the Colza
[63 ]
NEWS OF SPRING
and the Heath. But one of the great masters of vegetable
gunnery is the Spurge. The Spurge is an Euphorbiacea of
our climes, a tall and fairly ornamented ''weed," which often
exceeds the height of a man. I have a branch of Spurge on
my table at this moment, steeped in a glass of water. It has
trifid, greenish berries, which contain the seeds. From time
to time, one of these berries bursts with a loud report; and the
seeds, gifted with a prodigious initial velocity, strike the
furniture and the walls on every side. If one of them hits
your face, you feel as though you had been stung by an in-
sect, so extraordinary is the penetrating force of these tiny
seeds, each no larger than a pin's head. Examine the berry,
look for the springs that give it life: you shall not find the
secret of this force, which is as invisible as that of our nerves.
The Spanish Broom {Spartium junceum) has not only
pods, but flowers fitted with springs. You may have re-
marked the wonderful plant. It is the proudest representative
of this mighty family of the Brooms. Greedy of life, poor,
sober, robust, rejecting no soil, no trial, it forms along the
paths and in the mountains of the South huge, tufted balls,
sometimes ten feet high, which, between May and June, are
covered with a magnificent bloom of pure gold whose per-
[64]
INTELLIGENCE OF FLOWERS
fumes, mingling with those of its habitual neighbour, the
Honeysuckle, spread under the fury of a fierce sun delights
that are not to be described save by evoking celestial dewis,
Elysian springs, cool streams and starry transparencies in the
hollow of azure grottoes. . . .
The flower of this Broom, like that of all the papilionace-
ous Leguminoscs, resemble the flowers of the Peas of our
gardens ; and its lower petals, welded like the beak of a galley,
hermetically contain the stamens and the pistil. So long as
it is not ripe, the bee who explores it finds it impenetrable.
But, as soon as the moment of puberty arrives for the captive
bride and grooms, the beak bends under the weight of the
insect that rests upon it; and the golden chamber bursts
voluptuously, hurling with violence and afar, over the visitor,
over the flowers around, a cloud of luminous dust, which, by
way of additional precaution, a broad, eaved petal dashes upon
the stigma to be impregnated.
15
Let us leave the seeds and return to the flowers. As I
have said one could prolong indefinitely the list of their in-
genious inventions. I refer those who might wish to study
[ 6s ]
NEWS OF SPRING
these problems thoroughly to the works of Christian Konrad
Sprengel, who was the first, in 1793, in his curious volume,
Das entdeckte Geheimniss der Natur im Bau und in der Be-
fruchtung der Blumen, to analyze the functions of the different
organs in Orchids; next, to the books of Charles Darwin, Dr.
Hermann Miiller of Lippstadt, Hildebrand, Delpino the
Italian, Sir William Hooker, Robert Brown and many others.
We shall find the most perfect and the most harmonious
manifestations of vegetable intelligence among the Orchids.
In these contorted and eccentric flowers, the genius of the
plant reaches its extreme limits and, with unwonted fire,
pierces the wall that separates the kingdoms. For that mat-
ter, this name of Orchid must not be allowed to mislead us
or make us believe that we have here to do only with rare and
precious flowers, with those hothouse queens which seem to
claim the care of the goldsmith rather than the gardener.
Our native wild flora, which comprises all our modest
^Veeds," numbers more than twenty-five species of Orchids,
including just the most ingenious and complex. It is these
which Darwin has studied in his book. On the Various Con-
trivances by which Orchids are fertilized by Insects, which
is the wonderful history of the most heroic efforts of the soul
[ 66]
INTELLIGENCE OF FLOWERS
of the flower. It is out of the question that I should here, in
a few lines, summarize that abundant and fairylike biography.
Nevertheless, since we are on the subject of the intelligence
of flowers, it is necessary that we should give some idea of
the methods and the mental habits of that which excels all the
others in the art of compelling the bee or the butterfly to do
exactly what it wishes, in the prescribed form and time.
i6
It is not easy to explain without diagrams the extraordi-
narily complex mechanism of the Orchid. Nevertheless, I
will try to convey a fair notion of it with the aid of more or
less approximate comparisons, while avoiding, as far as pos-
sible, the use of technical terms such as retinaculum, lahellum,
rostellum and the rest, which evoke no precise image in the
minds of persons unfamiliar with botany.
Let us take one of the most widely-distributed Orchids
in our regions, the Orchis maculata, for instance, or rather,
because it is a little larger and therefore more easily observed,
the Orchis latifolia, the Marsh Orchid, commonly known as
the Meadow-rocket. It is a perennial plant and grows to a
height of an inch or more. It is pretty frequent in the woods
[67]
NEWS OF SPRING
and damp meadows and has a thyrse of little pink flowers,
which bloom in May and June.
The typical flower of our Orchids represents with some
closeness the fantastic, yawning mouth of a Chinese dragon.
The lower lip, which is very long, hangs in the form of a
jagged or dentate apron, serves as a perch or resting-place for
the insect. The upper lip rounds into a sort of hood, which
shelters the essential organs ; while, at the back of the flower,
beside the peduncle, there falls a kind of spur or long, pointed
horn, which contains the nectar. In most flowers, the stigma,
or female organ, is a more or less viscid little tuft which, at
the end of a frail stalk, patiently awaits the coming of the pol-
len. In the Orchid, this traditional installation has altered
past recognition. At the back of the mouth, in the place oc-
cupied in the throat by the uvula, are two closely-welded
stigmata, above which rises a third stigma modified into an
extraordinary organ. At its top, it carries a sort of little
pouch, or, more correctly, a sort of stoup, which is called the
rostellum. This stoup is full of a viscid fluid in which soak
two tiny balls whence issue two short stalks laden at their
upper extremity with a packet of grains of pollen carefully
tied up.
[ 68 ]
INTELLIGENCE OF FLOWERS
Let us now see what happens when an insect enters the
flower. She lands on the lower lip, outspread to receive her,
and, attracted by the scent of the nectar, seeks to reach the
horn that contains it, right at the back. But the passage is
purposely very narrow; and the insect's head, as she advances,
necessarily strikes the stoup. The latter, sensitive to the least
shock, is at once ripped along a suitable line and lays bare
the two little balls steeped in the viscid fluid. These, coming
into immediate contact with the visitor's skull, fasten to it and
become firmly stuck to it, so that, when the insect leaves the
flower, she carries them away and, with them, the two stalks
which rise from them and which end in the packets of tied-
up pollen. We therefore have the insect capped with two
straight, bottle-shaped horns. The unconscious artisan of a
difficult work now visits a neighbouring flower. If her horns
remained stiff, they would simply strike with their packets of
pollen the other packets of pollen soaking in the vigilant
stoup ; and no event would spring from this mingling of pol-
len with pollen. (But here the Orchid's genius, experience
and foresight become apparent. It has minutely calculated
the time needed for the insect to suck the nectar and repair
to the next flower; and it has ascertained that this requires,
[ 69]
NEWS OF SPRING
on an average, thirty seconds. We have seen that the packets
of pollen are carried on two short stalks inserted into the viscid
balls. Now at the point of insertion there is, under each stalk,
a small membranous disc, whose only function is, at the end
of thirty seconds, to contract and throw forward the stalks,
causing them to curve and describe an arc of ninety degrees.
This is the result of a fresh calculation, not of time, on this
occasion, but of space. The two horns of pollen that cap the
nuptial messenger are now horizontal and point in front of
her head, so that, when she enters the next flower, they will
just strike the two welded stigmata under the overhanging
stoup.
This is not all and the genius of the Orchid has not yet
expended all its foresight. The stigma receiving the blow of
the packet of pollen is coated with a viscid substance. If this
substance were as powerfully adhesive as that contained in the
little stoup, the pollen-masses, after their stalks were broken,
would stick to it and remain fixed to it intact; and their destiny
would be ended. This must not be; it is important that the
chances of the pollen should not be exhausted in a single ven-
ture, but rather that they should be multiplied as far as pos-
sible. The flower that counts the seconds and measures the
[ 70]
INTELLIGENCE OF FLOWERS
line at units is a chemist to boot and distils two sorts of gums:
one extremely adhesive, which hardens as soon as it touches
the air and glues the pollen-horns to the insect's head; the
other greatly diluted, for the work of the stigma. This latter
is just prehensile enough slightly to unfasten or loosen the
tenuous and elastic threads wherewith the grains of pollen are
tied. Some of these grains adhere to it, but the pollen-mass
is not destroyed ; and, when the insect visits other flowers, she
will continue her fertilizing labours almost indefinitely.
Have I expounded the whole miracle? No; I have still
to call attention to many a neglected detail : among others, to
the movement of the little stoup, which, after its membrane
has been ruptured to unmask the viscid balls, immediately lifts
its lower rim in order to preserve in good condition, in the
sticky fluid, the packet of pollen which the insect may not have
carried off. We should also note the very curiously-combined
divergence of the pollen-stalks on the head of the insect, as
well as certain chemical precautions common to all plants;
for M. Gaston Bonnier's recent experiments would seem to
prove that every flower, in order to maintain its species intact,
secretes poisons that destroy or sterilize any foreign pollen.
This is more or less all that we see ; but here, as in all things,
[71 ]
NEWS OF SPRING
the real, the great miracle begins where our power of vision
ends.
17
I have this moment found, in an untilled corner of the
olive-yard a splendid sprig of Loroglossum hiricinum, a
variety which, for I know not what reason (perhaps it is very-
rare in England), Darwin omitted to study. It is certainly
the most remarkable, the most fantastic, the most astounding
of all our native Orchids. If it were of the size of the Amer-
ican Orchids, one might declare that there is no more fanci-
ful plant in existence. Imagine a thyrse, like that of the
Hyacinth, but twice as tall. It is symmetrically adorned with
ill-favoured, three-cornered flowers, of a greenish white
stippled with pale violet. The lower petal, embellished at its
source with bronzed wattles, long, drooping moustaches and
sinister-looking lilac buboes, stretches out interminably,
madly, unreally, in the shape of a corkscrew riband of the
colour assumed by drowned men after a month's immersion
in the river. From the whole, which conjures up the idea of
the most fearsome maladies and seems to blossom in some dim
land of mocking nightmares and witcheries, there issues a
potent and abominable stench as of a poisoned goat, which
[72 ]
THORNS
Stic, the mos;
;• /if r^^r> civf (>f flip
.nai tnei
i
«1.t- m.Kf- f.'
ribai
rowned w
ICy wh;
n:"! seems to I
at ^ad a I
INTELLIGENCE OF FLOWERS
spreads afar and reveals the presence of the monster. I am
selecting and describing this nauseating Orchid because it
is fairly common in France, is easily recognized and adapts
itself very well, by reason of its height and the distinctness of
its organs, to any experiments that one might wish to make.
We have only, in fact, to insert the end of a wooden match
in the flower and push it carefully to the bottom of the nectary,
in order to witness with the naked eye all the successive phases
of fertilization. Grazed in passing, the pouch or rostellum
sinks down, exposing the little viscid disc (the Loroglossum
has only one) that supports the two pollen-stalks. This disc
grips the end of the wood violently at once; the two cells
that contain the balls of pollen open lengthwise; and, when
the match is withdrawn, its tip is firmly capped with two stiff,
diverging horns, each ending in a golden ball. Unfortu-
nately, we do not here, as in the experiment with the Orchis
latifolia, enjoy the charming spectacle afforded by the gradual
and precise inclination of the two horns. Why are they not
lowered? We have but to push the capped match into a
neighbouring nectary to ascertain that this movement would
be superfluous, the flower being much larger than that of the
Orchis maculata or latifolia and the nectar-horn arranged in
[ 75 ]
NEWS OF SPRING
such a way that, when the insect laden with the pollen-masses
enters it, those masses just reach the level of the stigma to be
fertilized.
Let us add that it is important to the success of the ex-
periment to select a flower that is quite ripe. We do not
know when the flower is ripe; but the insect and the flower
know, for the flower does not invite its indispensable guests,
by offering them a drop of nectar, until the moment when all
its apparatus is in working order.
i8
This is the basis of the system of fertilization adopted
by the Orchid of our climes. But each species, every family
modifies and improves the details in accordance with its par-
ticular experience, psychology and convenience. The Orchis
or Anacamptis pyramidalis, for instance, which is one of the
most intelligent, has added to its lower lip or labellum two
little ridges which guide the proboscis of the insect to the
nectar and compel her to accomplish exactly what is expected
of her. Darwin very justly compares this ingenious acces-
sory with the little instrument for guiding a thread into the
fine eye of a needle. Here is another interesting improve-
[76]
INTELLIGENCE OF FLOWERS
ment: the two little balls that carry the pollen-stalks and soak
in the stoup are replaced by a single viscid disc, shaped like
a saddle. If, following the road to be taken by the insect's
proboscis, we insert the point of a needle or a bristle into the
flower, we very plainly perceive the advantages of this simpler
and more practical arrangement. As the bristle touches the
stoup, the latter splits in a symmetrical line and uncovers the
saddle-shaped disc, which at once fastens to the bristle.
Withdraw the bristle smartly and you will just have time to
catch the pretty action of the saddle, which, seated on the
bristle or needle, curls its two flaps inwards, so as to embrace
the object that supports it. The purpose of this movement is
to strengthen the adhesive power of the saddle and, above all,
to ensure with greater precision than in the Orchis latifolia
the indispensable divergence of the pollen-stalks. As soon
as the saddle has curled round the bristle and as the pollen-
stalks planted in it, drawn apart by its contraction, are forced
to diverge, the second movement of the stalks begins and they
bend towards the tip of the bristle, in the same manner as in
the Orchid which we have already studied. The two com-
bined movements are performed in thirty to thirty-four sec-
onds.
NEWS OF SPRING
19
Is it not exactly in this manner, by means of trifles, of
successive overhaulings and retouches, that human inventions
proceed? We have all, in the latest of our mechanical in-
dustries, followed the tiny, but continual improvements in
the sparking-plug, the carburetter, the clutch and the speed-
gear. It would really seem as though ideas came to the
flowers in the same way as to us. The flowers grope in the
same darkness, encounter the same obstacles, the same ill-will,
in the same unknown. They know the same laws, the same
disappointment, the same slow and difficult triumphs. They
would appear to possess our patience, our perseverance, our
self-love, the same varied degrees of intelligence, almost the
same hopes and the same ideals. They struggle, like our-
selves, against a great indifferent force that ends by assisting
them. Their inventive imagination not only follows the same
prudent and minute methods, the same tiring, narrow and
winding little paths : it also has unexpected leaps and bounds
that suddenly bring to perfection an uncertain discovery. It
is thus that a family of great inventors, among the Orchids,
a strange and rich American family, that of the Catasetida,
obeying a bold inspiration, abruptly altered a number of
[78 ]
INTELLIGENCE OF FLOWERS
habits that doubtless appeared to it too primitive. First of
all, the separation of the sexes is absolute: each has its par-
ticular flower. Next, the pollinium, or mass or packet of
pollen, no longer dips its stalk in a stoup full of gum, there
awaiting, a little inertly and, in any case, without initiative,
the happy accident that shall fix it to the insect's head. It
is bent back on a powerful spring, in a sort of cell. Nothing
attracts the insect specially in the direction of this cell. Nor
have the haughty Catasetidce reckoned, like the common
Orchid, on this or that movement of the visitor: a guided
and precise movement, if you wish, but nevertheless a con-
tingent movement. No, the insect no longer enters a flower
merely endowed with an admirable mechanism: she enters
an animated and literally sensitive flower. Hardly has she
landed in the magnificent outer court of copper-coloured silk
before long and nervous feelers, which she cannot avoid touch-
ing, carry the alarm all over the edifice. Forthwith the cell
is torn asunder in which the pollen-mass, divided into two
packets, is held captive on its bent pedicel, which is supported
on a large viscid disc. Abruptly released, the pedicel springs
back like a bow, dragging with it the two packets of pollen
and the viscid disc, which are projected outside. As the re-
[79]
NEWS OF SPRING
suit of a curious ballistic calculation, the disc is always hurled
first and strikes the insect, to whom it adheres. She, stunned
by the blow, has but one thought: to leave the aggressive
corolla with all speed and take refuge in a neighbouring
flower. This is all that the American Orchid wanted.
20
Shall I also mention the curious and practical simplifica-
tions introduced into the general system by another family of
exotic Orchids, the Cypripedece? Let us still bear in mind
the devious ways of human inventions : we have here an amus-
ing imitation. A fitter, in the engine-room; an assistant, a
pupil, in the laboratory, says, one day, to his principal:
"Suppose we tried to do just the opposite? . . . Sup-
pose we reversed the movement? . . . Suppose we in-
verted the mixture of the fluids?"
The experiment is tried; and suddenly from the unknown
issues something unexpected.
One could easily believe the Cypripedea to have held
similar conversations among themselves. We all know the
Cypripedium, or Ladies'-slipper: with its enormous shoe chin,
its crabbed and venomous air, it is the most characteristic
[ 80 ]
ORCHIS LATIFOLIA
mention the curious and practical simplifii
ced into the general system by another family
is, the Cypripedece? Let us still bear in mi
: of human inventions: we have here ar
A fitter, in the cngi
p laboratoffJ!a'5«rA*^»P^Pnib print-
e w^e tried he opp<
pole 'Tsed the , t*nt? . suppose v-t \
)nc coi oelieve the Cypripedea to
similar conv mong themselves. ^
C ipper: with \t<
INTELLIGENCE OF FLOWERS
flower of our hothouses, the one that seems to us the typical
Orchid, so to speak. The Cypripedium has boldly sup-
pressed all the complicated and delicate apparatus of the
springy pollen-packets, the diverging stalks, the viscid discs,
the insidious gums and the rest. Its clog-like chin and a bar-
ren, scutate anther bar the entrance in such a manner as to
compel the insect to pass its proboscis over two little heaps of
pollen. But this is not the important point: the wholly un-
expected and abnormal thing is that, contrary to w^hat we
have observed in all the other species, it is no longer the
stigma, the female organ, that is viscid, but the pollen itself,
whose grains, instead of being powdery, are covered with a
coat so glutinous that it can be stretched and drawn into
threads. What are the advantages and the drawbacks of this
new arrangement? It is to be feared that the pollen carried
off by the insect may adhere to any object other than the
stigma; on the other hand, the stigma is dispensed from secret-
ing the fluid intended to sterilize all foreign pollens. In any
case, this problem would demand a special study. In the
same way, there are patents whose usefulness we do not grasp
at once.
[ 83 ]
NEWS OF SPRING
21
To have done with this strange tribe of the Orchids, it
remains for us to say a few words on an auxiliary organ that
sets the whole mechanism going: I mean the nectary, which,
for that matter, has been the object, on the part of the genius
of the species, of enquiries, attempts and experiments as in-
telligent and as varied as those which are incessantly modify-
ing the economy of the essential organs.
The nectary, as we have seen, is, in principle, a sort of
spur, or long, pointed horn, that opens right at the bottom of
the flower, beside the stalk, and acts more or less as a counter-
poise to the corolla. It contains a sugary liquid, the nectar,
which serves as food for butterflies, beetles and other insects
and which is turned into honey by the bee. Its business,
therefore, is to attract the indispensable guests. It is adapted
to their size, their habits, their tastes; it is always arranged in
such a way that they cannot introduce or withdraw their pro-
boscis without scrupulously and successively performing all
the rites prescribed by the organic laws of the flower.
We already know enough of the fantastic character and
imagination of the Orchids to gather that here, as elsewhere
— and even more than elsewhere, for the suppler organ lent
[ 84]
INTELLIGENCE OF FLOWERS
itself to this more readily — their inventive, practical, observ-
ant and groping spirit gave itself free scope. One of them,
for instance, the Sarcanthus teretifolius, probably failing in
its endeavour to elaborate a viscid fluid that should harden
quickly enough to stick the packet of pollen to the insect's
head, overcame the difficulty by delaying the visitor's pro-
boscis as long as possible in the narrov^ passages leading to
the nectar. The labyrinth which it laid out is so complicated
that Bauer, Darwin's skilful draughtsman, had to admit him-
self beaten and gave up the attempt to draw it.
There are some which, starting on the excellent prin-
ciple that every simplification is an improvement, have boldly
suppressed the nectar-horn. They have replaced it by certain
fleshly, fantastic and evidently succulent excrescences which
are nibbled by the insects. Is it necessary to add that these
excrescences are always placed in such a manner that the guest
who feasts on them must inevitably set all the pollen-machin-
ery; in movement?
22
But, without lingering over a thousand very various little
artifices, let us end these fairy stories by studying the lures
[ 85 ]
NEWS OF SPRING
of the Coryanthes macrantha. Truly, we no longer know
with exactly what sort of being we here have to do. The
astounding Orchid has contrived this: its lower lip or
labellum forms a sort of large bucket, into which drops of al-
most pure water, secreted by two horns situated overhead, fall
continually; when this bucket is half full, the water flows
away on one side by a spout or gutter. All this hydraulic in-
stallation is very remarkable in itself; but here is where the
alarming, I might almost say the diabolical side of the com-
bination begins. The liquid which is secreted by the horns
and which accumulates in the satin basin is not nectar and is
in no way intended to attract the insects : it has a much more
delicate function in the really Machiavellian plan of this
strange flower. The artless insects are invited by the sugary
perfumes diffused by the fleshy excrescences of which I spoke
above to walk into the trap. These excrescences are above the
bucket, in a sort of chamber to which two lateral openings
give access. The big visiting bee — the flower, being enor-
mous, allures hardly any but the heaviest Hymenoptera, as
though the others experienced a certain shame at entering such
vast and sumptuous halls — the big bee begins to nibble the
savoury wattles. If she were alone, she would go away
[ 86]
CATASETUM AND CYPRIPEDIUMS
this bucket is half fu
de by a spout or '^
.'^r\r rem- rk able in -.
nugiii: ai — "^e dmu -^ of p"^
The liquid which is secreted by the
accumulates in the satin basin is n
ntended t^ ^^^s a
ft|^UttC13^l»^^'^^HH\17MFSbA'VAbian plan
, ,,^ red by the suearv
...ed by tne nc. ^^-v..o:
into the trap. 11 .essences are u
J ft of chamber to which two lateral
. r visitinc bee — the flow
dly any but i '^^"^ ^^
tnougn uic experienced a c^i
vast and S' • ' the big oee i:
ere alone, she v
r 86 1
INTELLIGENCE OF FLOWERS
quietly, after finishing her meal, without even grazing the
bucket of water, the stigma and the pollen; and none of that
which is required would take place. But the wise Orchid has
observed the life that moves around it. It knows that the
bees form an innumerous, greedy and busy people, that they
come out by thousands in the sun-lit hours, that a perfume has
but to quiver like a kiss on the threshold of an opening flower
for them to hasten in numbers to the banquet laid under the
nuptial tent. We therefore have two or three looters in the
sugary chamber: the space is scanty, the walls slippery, the
guests ill-mannered. They crowd and hustle one another to
such good purpose that one of them always ends by falling
into the bucket that awaits her beneath the treacherous repast.
She there finds an unexpected bath, conscientiously wets her
bright, diaphanous wings and, despite immense efforts, can-
not succeed in resuming her flight. This is where the astute
flower lies in wait for her. There is but one opening through
which she can leave the magic bucket: the spout that acts as
a wastepipe for the overflow of the reservoir. It is just wide
enough to allow of the passage of the insect, whose back
touches first the sticky surface of the stigma and then the viscid
glands of the pollen-masses that await her along the vaulted
[ 89]
NEWS OF SPRING
way. She thus escapes, laden with the adhesive dust, and
enters a neighbouring flower, where the tragedy of the ban-
quet, the hustling, the fall, the bath and the escape is reenacted
and perforce brings the imported pollen into contact with the
greedy stigma.
Here, then, we have a flower that knows and plays upon
the passions of insects. Nor can it be pretended that all these
are only so many more or less romantic interpretations: no,
the facts have been precisely and scientifically observed and
it is impossible to explain the use and arrangement of the
flower's different organs in any other manner. We must ac-
cept the evidence as it stands. This incredible and efficacious
artifice is the more surprising inasmuch as it does not here tend
to satisfy the immediate cravings of hunger that sharpen the
dullest wits ; it has only a distant ideal in view : the propagation
of the species.
But why, we shall be asked, these fantastic complications
which end only by increasing the risk of failure? Let us not
hasten to give judgment and reply. We know nothing of the
reasons of the plant. Do we know what obstacles the flower
encounters in the direction of logic and simplicity? Do we
know thoroughly a single one of the organic laws of its ex-
[ 90 3.
INTELLIGENCE OF FLOWERS
istence and its growth? One watching us from the height of
Mars or Venus, as we exert ourselves to achieve the conquest
of the air, might, in his turn, ask:
"Why those shapeless and monstrous machines, those bal-
loons, those aeroplanes, those parachutes, when it were so easy
to copy the birds and to supply the arms with a pair of all-
sufficing wings?"
. 23
To these proofs of intelligence, man's somewhat puerile
vanity opposes the traditional objection : yes, they create mar-
vels, but those marvels remain eternally the same Each
species, each variety has its system and, from generation to gen-
eration, introduces no perceptible improvement. It is true that
since we have been observing them — that is to say, during the
past fifty years — we have not seen the Coryanthes macrantha or
the Catasetidcd refine upon their trap : this is all that we can
say; and it is really not enough. Have we as much as at-
tempted the most elementary experiments; and do we know
what the successive generations of our astonishing Bathing-
orchid might do in a century's time, if placed in different sur-
roundings, among insects to which it was not accustomed?
[91 ]
NEWS OF SPRING
Besides, the names which we give to the orders, species and
varieties end by deceiving ourselves; and we thus create
imaginary types which we believe to be fixed, whereas they
are probably only the representatives of one and the same
flower, which continues to modify its organs slowly in ac-
cordance with slow circumstances.
The flowers arrived on this earth before the insects ; they
had, therefore, when the latter appeared, to adapt an en-
tirely new system of machinery to the habits of these unex-
pected collaborators. This geologically-incontestable fact
alone, amid all that which we do not know, is enough to estab-
lish evolution; and does not this somewhat vague word mean,
after all, adaptation, modification, intelligent progress?
It were easy, moreover, without appealing to this pre-
historic event, to bring together a large number of facts which
would show that the faculty of adaptation and intelligent
progress is not reserved exclusively for the human race.
Without returning to the detailed chapters which I have de-
voted to this subject in The Life of the Bee, I will simply re-
call two or three topical details which are there mentioned.
The bees, for instance, invented the hive. In the wild and
primitive state and in their country of origin, they work in the
[92]
INTELLIGENCE OF FLOWERS
open air. It was the uncertainty, the inclemency of our
northern seasons that gave them the idea of seeking a shelter
in hollow trees or a hole in the rocks. This ingenious idea
restored to the work of looting and to the care of the eggs the
thousands of bees stationed around the combs to maintain the
necessary heat. It is not uncommon, especially in the South,
during exceptionally mild summers, to find them reverting
to the tropical manners of their ancestors.^
Another fact: when transported to Australia or Cali-
fornia, our black bee completely alters her habits. After one
or two years, finding that summer is perpetual and flowers for
ever abundant, she will live from day to day, content to gather
the honey and pollen indispensable for the day's consumption;
and, her recent and thoughtful observation triumphing over
^ I had just written these lines, when M. E. L. Bouvier made a communication
in the Academy of Science {cf. the report of the 7th of May, 1906) on the subject of
two nidifications in the open air observed in Paris, one in a Sophora japonica, the
other in a chestnut-tree. The latter, which hung from a small branch furnished with
two almost contiguous forks, was the more remarkable of the two, because of its evident
and intelligent adaptation to particularly difficult circumstances:
"The bees," says M, de Parville, in his review in the Journal des Debats of the
31st of May, 1906, "built consolidating pillars and resorted to really remarkable artifices
of protection and ended by transforming the two forks of the chestnut-tree into a solid
ceiling. An ingenious man would certainly not have done so well.
"To protect themselves from the rain, they had put up fences, thicker walls and
sunblinds. One can conceive no idea of the perfection of the industry of the bees, short
of closely observing the architecture of the two nidifications, now at the Museum."
[ 93 ]
NEWS OF SPRING
hereditary experience, she will cease to make provision for
her winter. Biichner mentions an analogous fact, which also
proves the bees' adaptation to circumstances, not slow, secular,
unconscious and fatal, but immediate and intelligent: in Bar-
bados, the bees whose hives are in the midst of the refineries,
where they find sugar in plenty during the whole year, will
entirely abandon their visits to the flowers.
Let us lastly recall the amusing manner in which the
bees gave the lie to two learned English entomologists, Kirby
and Spence:
*^Show us," they said, "but one instance of bees having
substituted mud or mortar for propolis, mitys, or pissoceros,
and there could be no doubt of their being guided by reason."
Hardly had they expressed this somewhat arbitrary wish,
when another naturalist, Andrew Knight, having coated the
bark of certain trees with a sort of cement made of wax and
turpentine, observed that his bees ceased entirely to gather
propolis and employed only this new and unknown substance,
which they found ready prepared and abundant near their
home. Moreover, in apiculture, when pollen is scarce, the
bee-keeper has but to place a few handfuls of flour at their
disposal for them at once to understand that this can serve the
[94]
INTELLIGENCE OF FLOWERS
same purpose and be turned to the same use as the dust of the
anthers, although its taste, smell and colour are absolutely
different.
What I have said in the matter of the bees might, I
think. Mutatis mutandis^ be confirmed in the kingdom of the
flowers. It were probably enough for the wonderful evolu-
tionary efforts of the numerous varieties of the Sage, for in-
stance, to be subjected to a few experiments and studied more
systematically than a layman like myself is capable of doing.
Meanwhile, among many other indications that could easily
be collected, we learn from a curious monograph on cereals,
by Babinet, that certain plants, when transported far from
their wonted climate, observe the new circumstances and avail
themselves of them, exactly as the bees do. Thus, in the
hottest regions of Asia, Africa and America, where the win-
ter does not kill it annually, our corn becomes again what it
must have been at first, a perennial plant, like grass. It re-
mains always green, multiplies by the root and ceases to bear
either ears or grain. When, therefore, from its original trop-
ical country, it came to be acclimatized in our frost regions,
it had to upset its habits and invent a new method of multiply-
ing. As Babinet so well says :
[95 ]
NEWS OF SPRING
^The organism of the plant by an inconceivable miracle,
seemed to foresee the necessity of passing through the grain
stage, lest it should perish outright during the wintry season."
In any case, to destroy the objection which we mentioned
above and which has caused us to travel so far from our im-
mediate subject, it would be enough to establish one act of
intelligent progress, were it but for a single occasion, outside
mankind. But, apart from the pleasure which one takes in
refuting a self-sufficient and antiquated argument, how little
importance, when all is said, attaches to this question of the
personal intelligence of the flowers, the insects or the birds!
Suppose that we say, speaking of the Orchid and the bee alike,
that it is nature and not the plant or the insect that calculates,
that combines, that adorns, invents and thinks: what interest
can this distinction have for us? A much greater question
and one much worthier of our eager attention soars above
these details. What we have to do is to grasp the character,
the quality, the habits and perhaps the object of the general
intelligence whence emanate all the intelligent acts performed
upon this earth. It is from this point of view that the study
[96]
INTELLIGENCE OF FLOWERS
of those creatures — the ants and bees, among others — wherein,
the human form excepted, the proceedings and ideals of this
genius are most clearly manifested becomes one of the most
curious that we can undertake. It would seem, after all that
we have noted, that those tendencies, those intellectual meth-
ods must be at least as complex, as advanced, as startling in
the Orchids as in the social Hymenoptera. Let us add that a
large number of the motives and a portion of the logic of these
restless insects, so difficult of observation, still escape us,
whereas we can grasp with ease all the silent reasons, all the
wise and stable arguments of the placid flower.
Now what do we observe, when we perceive nature (or
the general intelligence or the universal genius: the name
matters but little) at work in the world of flowers? Many-
things; and, to mention it only in passing, for the subject
would lend itself to a long study, w^ begin by ascertaining
that her idea of beauty, of gladness, her methods of attraction,
her aesthetic tastes are very near akin to our own. But no
doubt it would be more correct to state that ours agree with
hers. It is, in fact, very uncertain whether we have ever in-
[97]
NEWS OF SPRING
vented a beauty peculiar to ourselves. All our architectural,
all our musical motives, all our harmonies of colour and light
are borrowed direct from nature. Without calling upon the
sea, the mountains, the skies, the night, the twilight, what
might one not say, for instance, of the beauty of the trees?
I speak not only of the tree considered in the forest, where it
is one of the powers of the earth, perhaps the chief source of
our instincts, of our perception of the universe, but of the
tree in itself, the solitary tree, whose green old age is laden
with a thousand seasons. Among those impressions which,
without our knowing it, form the limpid hollow and per-
haps the subsoil of happiness and calm of our whole exist-
ence, which of us does not preserve the recollection of a few
fine trees? When a man has passed mid-life, when he has
come to the end of the wondering period, when he has ex-
hausted nearly all the sights that the art, the genius and the
luxury of men and centuries can offer, after experiencing and
comparing many things, he returns to very simple memories.
They raise upon the purer horizon two or three innocent, in-
variable and refreshing images, which he would wish to carry
away with him in his last sleep, if it be true that an image can
pass the threshold that separates our two worlds. For myself, I
[98]
CORYANTHES MACULATA
, tne ?
I instance,
V of the tv.
I seasons. Among those imp.
owing it, form the limpid ho
osoil of happiness and calm of o\
.T hen a man h?^ ^ '-
f the wonacrin^
rhe sights that the an, the genius aa<
en and centuries can offer, after experien^
iig many things, he returns to very simph
ive upon the ourer horizon
,t:iu it-.jv.'i^iiig images, whi(^^ ■
a.>c> ^ )xh him in his last sleep, if it oe
pass the Id that separates our two
[98 ]
INTELLIGENCE OF FLOWERS
can picture no paradise nor after-life, however splendid,
where a certain magnificent Beech in the Sainte-Baume were
out of place, or a certain Cypress or a certain Umbrella-pine
of Florence or of a charming hermitage near my own house,
any one of which afifords to the passer-by a model of all the
great movements of necessary resistance, of peaceful courage,
of soaring, of gravity, of silent victory and of perseverance.
26
But I am wandering too far afield: I intended only to
remark, with reference to the flower, that nature, when she
wishes to be beautiful, to please, to delight and to prove her-
self happy, does almost what we should do had we her treas-
ures at our disposal. I know that, speaking thus, I am
speaking a little like the bishop who marvelled that Provi-
dence always made the great river flow past the big cities;
but it is difficult to look upon these things from any other
than the human point of view. Let us, then, from this
point of view, consider that we should know very few signs or
expressions of happiness if we did not know the flower. In
order to judge of its power of gladness and beauty, one must
live in a part of the country where it reigns undivided, such
as the corner of Provence, between the Siagne and the Loupj,
[lOl]
NEWS OF SPRING
where I am writing these lines. Here, truly, the flower is the
sole monarch of the hills and valleys. The peasants have lost
the habit of growing corn, as though they had now only to
provide for the needs of a more subtle race of men, who live
on sweet fragrance and ambrosia. The fields form one great
nosegay, which is incessantly renewed, and the perfumes that
succeed one another seem to circle in the dance all round the
azure year. Anemones, Gilliflowers, Mimosa, Violets, Pinks,
Narcissus, Hyacinths, Jonquils, Mignonette, Jasmine, Tube-
rose invade the days, the nights, the winter, summer, spring
and autumn months. But the magnificent hour belongs to
the Roses of May. Then, as far as the eye can see, from the
slope of the hills to the hollows of the plains, between banks
of Vines and Olive trees, they flow on every side like a stream
of petals flooding the houses and the trees, a stream of the
colour which we assign to youth and health and joy. The
scent, both warm and cool, but, above all things spacious and
heavenly, emanates, one would think, straight from the sources
of beatitude. The roads, the paths are carved in the pulp
of the flower, in the very substance of Paradise. For the
first time in our lives, we seem to have a satisfying vision of
happiness.
[102]
INTELLIGENCE OF FLOWERS
27
Still speaking from our human point of view and per-
severing in the necessary illusion, let us add to our first re-
mark one a little more extensive, a little less hazardous and
perhaps big with consequences, namely, that the genius of
the Earth, which is probably that of the universe, acts, in the
vital struggle, exactly as a man would act. It employs the
same methods, the same logic. It attains its aim by the same
means that we would use: it gropes, it hesitates, it corrects
itself time after time; it adds, it suppresses, it recognizes and
repairs its errors, as we should do in its place. It makes great
efforts, it invents with difficulty and little by little, after the
manner of the engineers and artisans in our workshops. Like
ourselves, it fights against the huge, ponderous, obscure mass
of its being. It knows no more than we do whither it is
going; it seeks and finds itself gradually. It has an ideal
that is often confused, but one wherein, nevertheless, we dis-
tinguish a host of great lines that rise towards a more ardent,
complex, nervous and spiritual life. Materially, it disposes
of infinite resources, it knows the secret of prodigious forces
of which we know nothing; but, intellectually, it appears
strictly to occupy our sphere: we cannot prove that, hitherto,
[ 103 ]
NEWS OF SPRING
it has exceeded its limits; and, if it does not take anything
from beyond them, does this not mean that there is nothing
outside that sphere? Does it not mean that the methods of the
human mind are the only possible methods, that man has not
erred, that he is neither an exception nor a monster, but the
being through whom pass, in whom are most intensely mani-
fested the great demands, the great desires of the universe?
28
The landmarks of our consciousness emerge slowly,
grudgingly. Perhaps Plato's famous allegory is no longer
sufficient: I mean the cave with the wall above it whence the
shadows of unknown men and objects are thrown into the
cave below; but, if we tried to substitute a new and more exact
image in its place, this would be hardly more consoling. Sup-
pose Plato's cave enlarged. No ray of daylight ever enters
it. With the exception of light and fire, it has been care-
fully supplied with all that our civilization admits; and men
have been imprisoned in it from their birth. They would not
regret the light, having never seen it; they would not be blind,
their eyes would not be dead, but, having nothing to look at,
would probably become the most sensitive organ of touch.
[104]
INTELLIGENCE OF FLOWERS
In order to recognize their actions, let us picture these
wretches in their darkness, amidst the multitude of unknown
objects that surround them. What quaint mistakes, what in-
credible slips, what unexpected interpretations must needs oc-
cur! But how touching and often how ingenious would seem
the purpose to which they would put things that were created
for use in the dark! How often would they guess aright?
And how great would be their amazement if, suddenly, by the
light of day, they discovered the nature and the real object of
utensils and furniture which they had accommodated as best
they could to the uncertainties of the shadow!
And yet their position seems simple and easy, compared
with our own. The mystery wherein they grovel is limited.
They are deprived of but one sense, whereas it is impossible
to estimate the number of those in which we are lacking.
The cause of their mistakes is one alone; the sources of ours
are countless.
As we live in a cave of this sort, is it not interesting to
find that the power which has placed us there acts often —
and in some important matters — even as we ourselves act?
Here we have glimmers in our subterranean cave to show
us that we have not mistaken the use of every object to be
[105]
NEWS OF SPRING
found therein; and some of these glimmers are conveyed to
us by the insects and the flowers.
29
We have long taken a rather foolish pride in thinking
ourselves miraculous, unparalleled and marvellously fortui-
tous beings, probably coming from another world, having no
definite ties with the rest of life and, in any case, endowed
with an unusual, incomparable, monstrous aptitude. It is
greatly preferable to be less prodigious, for we have learnt
that prodigies do not take long to disappear in the normal
evolution of nature. It is much more comforting to observe
that we follow the same road as the soul of this great world,
that we have the same ideas, the same hopes, the same trials
and — were it not for our specific dream of justice and pity —
the same feelings. It is much more consoling to assure our-
selves that, to better our lot, to utilize the forces, the occa-
sions, the laws of matter, we employ methods exactly similar
to those which it uses to enlighten and sway its unconscious
and unruly regions, that there are no other methods, that we
are in the right and that we are in our proper place and at
home in this universe formed of unknown substances, whose
[106]
INTELLIGENCE OF FLOWERS
thought, however, is not impenetrable and hostile, but analo-
gous and comformable to ours.
If nature knew everything, if she were never wrong, if,
ever5rwhere, in all her undertakings, she showed herself per-
fect and infallible at the first onset, if she revealed in all
things an intelligence immeasurably superior to our own, then
indeed there might be cause to fear and to lose courage. We
should feel ourselves the victim and the prey of an extraneous
power, which we should have no hope of knowing or meas-
uring. It is much better to be convinced that this power, at
least from the intellectual point of view, is close akin to our
own. Nature's intelligence and ours draw upon the same
reserves. We belong to the same world, we are almost equals.
We are associating not with inaccessible gods, but with veiled,
yet fraternal intentions which it is our business to grasp and
to direct.
30
It would not, I imagine, be very rash to maintain that
there are not creatures more or less intelligent, but a diffused,
general intelligence, a sort of universal fluid that penetrates
diversely the organisms which it encounters, according as they
are good or bad conductors of the understanding. Man, in that
[107]
NEWS OF SPRING
case, would hitherto represent, upon this earth, the mode of
life that offers the least resistance to this fluid, which the re-
ligions named divine. Our nerves would be the wires along
which this more subtle electricity would travel. The circum-
volutions of our brain would, in a manner, form the induc-
tion-coil wherein the force of the current would be multi-
plied; but this current would be of no other nature, would
proceed from no other scarce than that which passes through
the stone, the star, the flower or the animal.
But these are mysteries which it were somewhat idle to
interrogate, seeing that we do not yet possess the organ that
could gather their reply. Let us be satisfied with having ob-
served certain manifestations of this intelligence outside our-
selves. All that we observe within ourselves is rightly open
to suspicion: we are at once litigant and judge and we have
too great an interest in peopling our world with magnificent
illusions and hopes. But let the least external indication be
dear and precious to us. Those which the flowers have just
offered us are probably infinitesimal compared with what the
mountains, the sea and the stars would tell us, could we sur-
prise the secrets of their life. Nevertheless, they allow us
to presume with greater confidence that the spirit which
[io8]
INTELLIGENCE OF FLOWERS
quickens all things or emanates from them is of the same
essence as that which quickens our bodies. If this spirit re-
sembles us, if we thus resemble it, if all that it contains is
contained also within ourselves, if it employs our methods,
if it has our habits, our preoccupations, our tendencies, our
desires for better things, is it illogical for us to hope all that
we instinctively and invincibly do hope, seeing that it is al-
most certain that it hopes the same? Is it likely, when we
find so great a sum total of intelligence, scattered throughout
life, that this life should perform no work of intelligence, that
is to say, should not pursue an aim of happiness, of perfec-
tion, of victory over that which we call evil, death, darkness,
annihilation, but which is probably only life's sleep or the
shadow of its face?
[109]
PERFUMES
PERFUMES
I
AFTER speaking at some length of the intelligence of
the flowers, it will seem natural that we should say
a word of their soul, which is their perfume. Un-
fortunately, here, as in the case of the soul of man, a perfume
of another sphere, where reason bathes, we have at once to do
with the unknowable. We are almost entirely unacquainted
with the purpose of that zone of festive and invisibly magnif-
icent air which the corollas shed around themselves. There
is, in fact, a great doubt whether it serves chiefly to attract
the insects. In the first place, many among the most sweet-
scented of the flowers do not admit of cross-fertilization, so
that the visit of the butterfly or the bee is to them a matter
of indifference or annoyance. Next, that which attracts the
insects is solely the pollen and the nectar, which, generally,
have no perceptible odour. And thus we see them neglect the
most delicously perfumed flowers, such as the rose and the
carnation, to besiege in crowds the flowers of the maple or the
hazel-tree, whose aroma is, in a manner of speaking, null.
[113]
NEWS OF SPRING
Let us, then, confess that we do not yet know in what
respect perfumes are useful to the flower, even as we cannot
tell why we ourselves perceive them. Indeed, of all our
senses, that of smell is the most unexplained. It is evident that
sight, hearing, touch and taste are indispensable to our animal
existence. Only by long training do we learn to enjoy forms,
colours and sounds for their own sakes. However, our sense of
smell also exercises important servile functions. It is the custo-
dian of the air we breathe, the chemist or hygienic specialist
that watches carefully over the quality of the food offered for
our consumption, any disagreeable emanation revealing the
presence of suspicious or dangerous germs. But besides this
practical mission it has another which serves no apparent pur-
pose. Perfumes are utterly useless to the needs of our material
life. When too violent or too lasting, they may even become
detrimental to it. Nevertheless, we possess a faculty that revels
in them and brings us the joyful tidings of them with as much
enthusiasm and conviction as though it concerned the discov-
ery of a delicious fruit or beverage. This uselessness deserves
our consideration. It must hide some fair secret. We have
here the only instance in which nature procures us a gratuitous
pleasure, a satisfaction that does not serve to gild one of neces-
[114]
^•^i"
ROSE
#-V-s.-
IvCt m, i wc do ai>
'-''■•'
t«*n V. fu oerceive them.
i. laost unexplained, j < i^ .
ach and taste are indispensable to our
e Only by long training do we learn to enjoy iun
colours and sounds for their own sakes. However, our sense ot
smell also exercises important servile functions. It is the cu-
dian of the air wx breathe, the chemist or hygienic specialist
that watches carefully over the quality of the food offered for
our consumption, any disagreeable emanation revealing me
presence of suspicious or dangerous germs. But besides this
practical mission it has anotfSf?^hich serves no apparent pur-
pose. Perfumes are utterly useless to the needs of our material
'i^t: When too violent or too lastinp^. thcv mav even become
u Jinental to it. Nevertheless, »>^ ^; -r-v.^- a ^a^uity that revels
r them and brings us the joyful tidings of them with as much
enthusiasm and conviction as though it concerned the discov-
y of a delicious fruit or beverage. This uselessness desci
our consideration. It must hide some fair secret. \^
here the only instance in which nature procure? us a P^ratuit
pleasure, a satisfaction that does not serve lu i^na
[1.4]
Jtl\, V'l 14 V
izrn
PERFUMES
sity's snares. Our sense of smell is the one sheerly luxurious
sense that she has granted us. Wherefore it seems almost
foreign to our bodies and appears but remotely connected with
our organism. Is it an instrument that is developing, or one
that is becoming atrophied; a somnolent, or an awakening
faculty? Everything suggests that evolving simultaneously
with our civilization. The ancients were interested almost ex-
clusively in the more violent, the heavier, the more solid scents,
so to speak; musk, benzoin, myrrh and frankincense; and the
fragrance of the flowers is very seldom mentioned in Greek
and Latin poetry or in Hebrew literature. To-day, do we
ever see our peasants, even at their longest periods of leisure,
dream of smelling a violet or a rose? And is not this, on the
other hand, the very first act of an inhabitant of our great
cities who perceives a flower? There is, therefore, some
ground for admitting that the sense of smell is the last-born-
of our senses, the only one, perhaps, that is not *^on the retro-
gade path," to use the ponderous phrase of the biologist.
This is a reason for making it our study, questioning it and
cultivating its possibilities. Who shall tell the surprises
which it would have in store for us if it equalled, for in-
stance, the perfection of our sight, as it does in the case of
[117]
NEWS OF SPRING
the dog, which lives as much by the nose as by the eyes?
We have here an unexplored world. This mysterious
sense, which, at first sight, appears almost foreign to our
organism, becomes, perhaps, when more carefully considered,
that which enters into it most intimately. Are we not, above
all things, creatures of the air? Is the air not for us the most
absolutely and urgently indispensable element; and is not our
sense of smell just the one sense that perceives some parts of
it? Perfumes, which are the jewels of that life-giving air,
do not adorn it without good cause. It were not surprising
if this luxury which we do not understand corresponded with
something very profound and very essential and, as we have
seen, with something that is not yet rather than something that
has ceased to be. It is very possible that this sense, the only
one directed towards the future, is already grasping the most
striking manifestations of a form or of a happy and salutary
state of matter that is reserving many a surprise for us.
Meanwhile, it has not yet reached beyond the stage of
the more violent, the less subtle perceptions. Hardly does it
so much as suspect, with the aid of the imagination, the pro-
found and harmonious effluvia that evidently envelop the great
spectacles of the atmosphere and the light. As we are on the
[ii8]
I
PERFUMES
point of distinguishing those of the rain or the twilight, why
should we not one day succeed in recognizing and establishing
the scent of snow, of ice, of morning dew, of early dawn, of
the twinkling of the stars? Everything in space must have its
perfume, as yet past comprehension: even a moonbeam, a
ripple on the water, a soaring cloud, an azure smile of the
sky. . . .
Chance or rather deliberate choice has lately led me back
to the spot where almost all the perfumes of Europe are born
and brought to perfection. It is, in point of fact, as every
one knows, in the sun-swept region between Cannes and Nice
that the last hills and the last valleys of live and true flowers
maintain an heroic struggle against the coarse chemical odours
of Germany, which stand in exactly the same relation to na-
ture's perfumes as to the painted woods and plains of a theatre
to the woods and plains of the real country. Here, the peas-
ant's work is ruled by a sort of purely floral calendar, in which,
in May and July, two adorable queens hold sway: the rose
and the jasmine. Around these two sovereigns of the year,
one the hue of the dawn, the other arrayed in white stars,
[119]
NEWS OF SPRING
circle, from January to December, the innumerous and eager
violets, the riotous jonquils, the artless, wide-eyed narcissus,
the clustering mimosa, the mignonette, the pink laden with
precious spices, the compelling geranium, the aggressively-
virginal orange-flower, the lavender, the Spanish broom, the
too-potent tuberose and the cassie, which is a species of acacia
and bears a flower resembling an orange caterpillar.
It is, at first, not a little incongruous to see those tall thick-
set, heavy rustics, whom harsh necessity turns every elsewhere
from the smiles of life, taking flowers thus seriously, handling
carefully those fragile ornaments of the earth, performing a
task fit for a princess or a bee and bending under a weight of
violets or jonquils. But the most striking impression is that of
certain evenings or mornings in the season of the roses or the
jasmine. It is as though the atmosphere of the earth had
suddenly changed, as though it had made way for that of an
infinitely happy planet, where perfumes are not, as here, fleet-
ing, vague and precarious, but stable, spacious, full, perma-
nent, generous, normal and inalienable.
3
Many writers, speaking of Grasse and its neighbourhood,
[120]
PERFUMES
have — at least, so I imagine — drawn a picture of that almost
fairy-like industry which occupies the whole of a hard-working
town, perched, like a sunlit hive, upon a mountain-side. They
must have sung of the glorious cartloads of roses shot upon the
threshold of the smoking factories, the great halls in which
the sorters literally wade through the flood of petals, the less
cumbersome, but more precious arrival of the violets, tube-
roses, acacia, jasmine, in great baskets which the peasant-
women carry proudly on their heads. They must have de-
scribed the different processes whereby the flowers, each ac-
cording to its character, are forced to yield to the crystal the
marvellous secrets of their hearts. We know that some of
them, the roses, for instance, are accommodating and willing
and surrender their aroma by simple methods. They are
heaped into huge boilers, tall as those of our locomotive-en-
gines, through which steam passes. Little by little, their es-
sential oil, more costly than molten pearls, oozes drop by
drop into a glass tube, no wider than a goosequill, at the bot-
tom of the still, which resembles a monster painfully giving
birth to a bead of amber.
But the greater part of the flowers do not so easily allow
their souls to be imprisoned. I will not speak here of the in-
[121]
NEWS OF SPRING
finitely varied tortures inflicted upon them to force them at
length to surrender the treasure which they desperately con-
ceal in their corollas. It will suffice, to give an idea of the
executioner's cunning and the obstinacy of some of the victims,
to recall the pangs of the cold enfleurage which certain flow-
ers— the jonquil, the mignonette, the tuberose and the jasmine
— are made to endure before they break silence; and I may
mention, in passing, that the scent of the jasmine is the only
one that is not to be imitated, the only one that cannot be ob-
tained by an ingenious blending of other odours.
Large plates of glass are coated with a bed of white fat
two fingers deep ; and the whole is thickly covered with flow-
ers. As the result of what hypocritical manceuvres, of what
unctuous promises does the fat obtain their irrevocable con-
fidences? The fact remains that soon the too-trusting flowers
have nothing left to lose. Forthwith, each morning, they are
removed and thrown on the rubbish-heap; and a fresh batch
of innocents takes their place on the insidious couch. These
yield in their turn and undergo the same fate; more and yet
more follow them. It is not until the end of three months,
that is after devouring ninety successive generations of flow-
ers, that the greedy and captious fat, saturated with fragrant
[122]
tSk
W
JASMINE
will suffice, to give an idea 03
'nd the obstinacy of some of the victim
caii a: the cold enfleurage which certain iU)v
rs— the jonquil, the mignonette, the tuberose and the jasmine
-are made to endure before they break silence; and I
mention, in passing, that the scent of the jasmine is the only
)iie that is not to be imitated, the only one that cannot be ob-
tained by an ingenious blending of other odours.
Large plates of glass are coated with a bed of white fa*
wo fingers deep; and the whole is thickly covered with flow
As the result of what nypocrftical manoeuvres, of what
unctm)us .promises does the fat obtain their irrevocable con
'cnces? The fact remains that soon the too-trusting flowers
ii...c ; wthing left to lose. Forthwith, e " '^ "^orning, they are
removed and thrown on the rubbish-heap; and a fresh batci'
f innocents takes their place on the insidious couch. T
ield'in their turn and undergo the same fate; more anc
more follow them. It is not until the end of th
that is after devourine ninetv successive e^enr
trs, that the gr^v u> ,,
PERFUMES
surrenders and confidences, refuses to despoil any further vic-
tims.
As for the violets, they resist the importunities of the cold
fat; the torture of fire has to be superadded. The lard, there-
fore, is heated in the bain-marie. In consequence of this bar-
barous treatment, the sweet and modest flowers that deck the
roads in spring gradually lose the strength to keep their secret.
They yield, they give themselves; and their liquid executioner
is not satiated until it has absorbed four times its own weight
in petals, which causes the torture to be prolonged throughout
the season in which the violets blossom under the olive-trees.
But the tragedy is not over. It is now a matter of com-
pelling the greedy fat, whether it be hot or cold, to disgorge ;
for it means, with all its shapeless and evasive energy, to retain
the absorbed treasure. The object is achieved, not without
difficulty. The fat has base passions which are its undoing.
It is plied with alcohol, is intoxicated and ends by quitting its
hold. The alcohol now possesses the mystery. No sooner
are the secrets in its custody than it too claims the right to
impart them to none other, to keep them for itself alone. It
is attacked in its turn, reduced, evaporated, condensed; and,
after all these adventures, the liquid pearl, pure, essential,
[125]
NEWS OF SPRING
inexhaustible and almost imperishable, is at last gathered on
a crystal blade.
I will not enumerate the chemical processes of extraction,
by means of petrol ether, sulphide of carbon and the rest.
The great perfumers of Grasse, ever loyal to tradition, scorn
these artificial and almost unfair methods, which yield none
but pungent scents and wound the soul of the flower.
[126]
NEWS OF SPRING
NEWS OF SPRING
I
1HAVE seen how Spring stores up sunshine, leaves and
flowers and makes ready, long beforehand, to invade the
North. Here, on the ever-balmy shores of the Mediter-
ranean— that motionless sea which looks as though it were
under glass — where, while the months are dark in the rest of
Europe, Spring has taken shelter from the wind and the snows
in a palace of peace and light and love, it is interesting, in the
fields of undying green, to detect its preparations for travel-
ling. I can see clearly that it is afraid, that it hesitates to face
once more the mighty frost-traps which February and March
annually lay for it beyond the mountains. It waits, it dallies,
it tries its strength before resuming the harsh and cruel road
which the hypocrite Winter seems to yield to it. It stops, sets
out again, revisits a thousand times, like a child running
round the garden of its holidays, the fragrant valleys, the ten-
der hills which the frost has never brushed with its wings.
It has nothing to do here, nothing to revive, since nothing has
perished and nothing suffered, since all the flowers of every
[129]
NEWS OF SPRING
season bathe here in the blue air of an eternal summer. But
it seeks pretexts, it lingers, it loiters, it goes to and fro like an
unoccupied gardener. It pushes aside the branches, caresses
with its breath the olive-tree that quivers with a silver smile,
polishes the glossy grass, rouses the corollas that were not
asleep, recalls the birds that had never fled, encourages the
bees that were workers without ceasing; and then, seeing, like
God, that all is well in the spotless Eden, it rests for a mo-
ment on the ledge of a terrace which the orange-tree crowns
with formal blossoms and with radiant fruits; and, before
leaving, rests a last look upon its labour of joy and entrusts
it to the sun.
I have followed it, these past few days, on the banks of
the Borigo, from the torrent of Carei to the Val de Gorbio;
in those little rustic towns, Ventimiglia, Tenda, Sospello; in
those curious villages, perched upon their rock, Castellar,
Sant' Agnese, Castillon; in that adorable and already quite
Italian country which surrounds Mentone. You pass through
a few streets quickened with the cosmopolitan and somewhat
hateful life of the Riviera; you leave behind you the band-
[130]
m
ALMOND BLOSSOMS
'N 'E
:ch
f> >: '1 c t I ^
.ve-cree tnai quivers wim a snvci
e glossy grass, rouses the corollas that wer
. -; alls the birds that had never fled, encourage
nat were workers without ceasing; and then, seeing
God. that all is well in the spotless Eden, it rests for a mo
1 the ledge of a terrace which the orange-tree c
vv : ri lormal blossoms and with radiant fruits; and, btioix
't':.^\iT.g^ re^ts a last look upon its labour of joy and en
it to the sun.
2
I have followed it, these past few da}"^, on the banks
the Borigo,. from the torrent of Carei to the Val li* .j>
in those little rustic towns, Ventimiglia, Tenda, Sospel
villages, perched upon their rock. Cast
Vgnese, Castillon; in that adorable and already
I ti? \ Kvn country which surrounds Mentone. You paf>
't " , ,f r --^t; nuickcnr<^ iv'tVi flip rnQmnr.) '
naiciui iiic of dl€ Rivi^
NEWS OF SPRING
stand, with its everlasting town music, around which gather
the consumptive rank and fashion of Mentone; and behold,
at two steps from the crowd that dreads it as it would a scourge
from Heaven, you find the admirable silence of the trees, with
all the goodly Virgilian realities of sunk roads, clear springs,
shady pools that sleep on the mountain-slopes, where they
seem waiting to reflect a goddess. You climb a path between
two walls of stone brightened by violets and crowned with
the strange brown cowls of the arisarum, which has leaves of
so deep a green that one might believe them to be created
to symbolize the coolness of the wells ; and the amphitheatre
of a valley opens like a moist and splendid flower. Through
the blue veil of the giant olive-trees, which cover the horizon
with a transparent curtain of shimmering pearls, shines the
discreet and harmonious glamour of all that men imagine in
their dreams and paint upon scenes that are thought unreal
and unrealizable, when they wish to define the ideal gladness
of an immortal hour, of some enchanted island, of a lost para-
dise or the abode of the gods.
3
All along the valleys of this coast are hundreds of those
[133]
NEWS OF SPRING
amphitheatres which are as stages whereupon, by moonlight
or amid the peace of the mornings and afternoons, are en-
acted the dumb fairy-plays of the world's happiness. They
are all alike; and yet each of them reveals a different bliss.
Each of them, as though they were the faces of a bevy of
equally happy and equally beautiful sisters, wears its dis-
tinguishing smile. A cluster of cypresses, clear-cut against the
sky; a mimosa like a bubbling spring of sulphur; a grove of
orange-trees with dark and heavy tops symmetrically weighted
with golden fruits that suddenly proclaim the royal affluence
of the soil that feeds them ; a slope covered with lemon-trees,
where the night seems to have heaped up on a mountain-side,
to await a new twilight, the stars gathered by the dawn; a
leafy portico opening over the sea like a deep glance that
suddenly discloses an infinite thought; a brook half-hidden
like a tear of joy; a trellis ready to receive the purple of the
grapes; a great stone basin drinking the water that trickles
from the tip of a green reed: all and yet none enhance the
expression of the restfulness, the tranquillity, the azure silence
and the blissfulness that is a delight unto itself.
4
But I am looking for Winter and the print of its foot-
[134]
NEWS OF SPRING
steps. Where is it hiding? It should be here ; and how dares
this feast of roses and anemones, of soft air and dew, of bees
and birds proceed with such assurance during the most pitiless
months of Winter's reign? And what will Spring do, what
will Spring say, since all seems done, since all seems said?
Is it superfluous, then, and is there nothing that awaits its com-
ing?
Search carefully: you shall find amid this life of un-
wearying youth the work of its hand, the perfume of its breath
which is younger than life. Thus, there are foreign trees
yonder, taciturn guests, like poor relations in ragged attire.
They come from very far, from the land of fog and frost and
wind. They are aliens, sullen and distrustful. They have
not yet learned the limpid speech, not adopted the delightful
customs of the South. They refused to believe the promise
of the sky and suspected the caresses of the sun, which, from
early dawn, covers them with a mantle of silkier and warmer
rays than that wherewith July loaded their shoulders in the
precarious summers of their native land. It made no differ-
ence: at the given hour, when snow was falling a thousand
miles away, their trunks shivered and, despite the bold aver-
ment of the grass and a hundred thousand flowers, despite
[ 135 ]
NEWS OF SPRING
the impertinence of the roses that climb up to them to bear
witness to life, they stripped themselves for their winter sleep.
Sombre and grim and bare as the dead, they await the Spring
that bursts forth around them; and, by a strange and excessive
reaction, they wait for it longer than under the harsh, gloomy
sky of Paris, for in Paris the buds are already beginning to
shoot. One recognizes them here and there amid the holiday
throng whose moveless dances witch the hills. They are not
many and they conceal themselves: they are gnarled oaks,
beeches, plane-trees ; and even the vine, which one had thought
better-mannered, more docile and well-informed, remains in-
credulous. There they stand, dismal and gaunt, like cripples
on an Easter Sunday in the church-porch made transparent by
the splendour of the sun. They have been there for years:
some of them, perhaps, for two or three centuries; but they
have the terror of Winter in their marrow. They will never
lose the habit of death. They have too much experience, they
are too old to forget and too old to learn. Their hardened
reason refuses to admit the light when it does not come at
the accustomed time. They are rugged old men, too wise to
enjoy unforeseen pleasures. They are wrong: wisdom should
not prohibit the finer indiscretions. Here, around the old,
[136]
NEWS OF SPRING
around the grudging ancestors, is a whole world of plants that
know nothing of the future, but give themselves to it. They
live but for a season; they have no past and no traditions and
they know nothing, save that the hour is fair and that they must
enjoy it. While their elders, their masters and their gods,
waste their time in sulking, these burst into flower; they love
and they beget. They are the humble flowers of sweet soli-
tude : the daisy that covers the sward with its artless and me-
thodical neatness; the borage bluer than the bluest sky; the
scarlet or many-hued anemone; the maidenly primrose; the
branching mallow; the campanula, shaking bells which no
one hears ; the rosemary that looks like a little country serving-
maid; and the pungent thyme that thrusts its grey head be-
tween the broken stones.
But, above all, this is the incomparable hour, the diapha-
nous and liquid hour of the wood-violet. Its verbal humility
becomes arrogant and almost intolerant. It no longer cowers
timidly among the leaves : it hustles the grass, overtops it, blots
it out, forces its colours upon it, fills it with its breath. Its un-
numbered smiles cover the terraces of vines, olive-trees, the
slopes of the ravines, the bend of the valleys with a net of sweet
and innocent gaiety; its perfume, fresh and pure as the souls
[137]
NEWS OF SPRING
of the springs that flow under the hills, makes the air more
translucent, the silence more limpid and is, in very deed, as
a forgotten legend tells us, the breath of Earth, all bathed in
dew, when, a virgin yet, she wakes in the sun and yields her-
self wholly in the first kiss of early dawn.
Again, in the little gardens that surround the cottages,
the bright little houses with their Italian roofs, the good,
kindly vegetables, unprejudiced and unpretentious, have never
known a doubt, a fear. While the old peasant who has come
to resemble the trees he cultivates, digs the earth around the
olives, the spinach assumes a lofty bearing, hastens to grow
green nor takes the least precaution; the bean opens its eyes
of jet in its pale leaves and sees the night fall unmoved; the
flighty peas shoot and lengthen out, covered with staid and
steadfast butterflies, as though June had entered the farm-gate ;
the carrot blushes as it faces the light; the ingenuous straw-
berry-plants inhale the aroma which noontide lavishes upon
them as it bends to earth its sapphire urns ; the lettuce exerts
itself to achieve a heart of gold wherein to lock the dews of
morn and eve.
[138]
NEWS OFSPRING
The fruit-trees alone have long reflected : the exanmple of
the vegetables among which they live urged them to take part
in the general rejoicing, but the rigid attitude of their elders
from the North, of the grandparents born in the great dark
forests, preached prudence to them. Nevertheless, they
awaken: they too can resist no longer and at last make up
their minds to join the dance of perfumes and of love. Th^
peach-trees are now no more than a rosy miracle: they suggest
the softness of a child's skin turned into azure vapour by the
breath of dawn. The pear-, the plum-, the apple-, the al-
mond-tree make dazzling efforts in drunken rivalry; and the
pale hazel-trees, like Venetian chandeliers, resplendent with
a cascade of gems, stand here and there to light the feast.
As for the luxurious flowers that seem to possess no other
object than themselves, they have long abandoned the en-
deavour to fathom the mystery of this boundless summer.
They no longer score the seasons, no longer count the days ;
and, knowing not what to do in the glowing disarray of hours
that have no shadow, dreading lest they should be deceived
and lose a single second that might be fair, they have resolved
to bloom without respite from January to December. Nature
approves them and, to reward their trust in happiness, their
[139]
NEWS OF SPRING
generous beauty and their amorous excesses, grants them a
force, a brilliancy and perfumes which she never gives to those
which hang back and show a fear of life.
All this, among other truths, was proclaimed by the little
house that I saw to-day on the side of a hill all deluged in
roses, carnations, wall-flowers, heliotrope and mignonette, so
as to suggest the source, choked and overflowing with flowers,
whence Spring was preparing to pour down upon us; while,
upon the stone threshold of the closed door, water-melons,
lemons, oranges, limes and Turkey figs slumbered peacefully
in the steel-blue shade and amid the majestic, deserted, mo-
notonous silence of a perfect day.
[140]
FIELD FLOWERS
FIELD FLOWERS
I
THEY greet our steps without the city gates, on a gay
and eager carpet of many colours, which they wave
madly in the sun. It is evident that they were expect-
ing us. When the first bright rays of March appeared, the
Snowdrop or Winter-bell, the heroic daughter of the hoar-
frost, sounded the reveille. Next sprang from the earth ef-
forts, as yet shapeless, of a slumbering memory, vague ghosts
of flowers, pale flowers that are scarcely flowers at all: the
Three-fingered or Rue-leaved Saxifrage; the almost invisible
Shepherd's Purse; the Two-leaved Squill; the Bear's-foot, or
Stinking Hellebore; the Colt's-foot; the gloomy and poison-
ous Spurge Laurel: all of them ailing and sickly; undecided
pale-blue and pale-pink attempts; life's first fever, wherein
nature voids her malignant humours; anaemic captives re-
leased by Winter's hand ; convalescents from the subterranean
prisons ; timid and unskilled endeavours of the shrouded light.
But soon the light adventures into space; the nuptial
thoughts of the earth become clear and pure; the rough at-
[ 143 ]
NEWS OF SPRING
tempts disappear; the half-dreams of the night lift like a fog
chased by the dawn; and the good rustic flowers begin their
unseen revels under the blue, all around the cities where man
knows them not No matter, they are there, making honey,
while their proud and barren sisters, who alone receive our
care, are still trembling in the hothouses. And they will be
there, just the same, in the flooded fields, in the sunken paths
and adorning the roads with their simplicity, when the first
snows shall have covered the countryside. No one sows them
and no one gathers them. They survive their renown and
man treads them under foot. Formerly, however, and not
long ago, they alone represented nature's gladness. Formerly,
however, a few hundred years ago, before their brilliant,
chilly kinswomen had come from the West Indies, from India,
from Japan, or before their own daughters, ungrateful and
unrecognizable, had usurped their place, they alone brought
gladness to sorrowing eyes, they alone brightened the cottage-
porch, the castle-terrace and followed the lovers' footsteps
in the woods. But those times are no more ; and they are de-
throned. They have retained of their past happiness only
the names which they received when they were loved.
And those names show all that they were to man : all his
[144]
m^
SPRING
the 4awn; zad the rs begin their
vd$ render the blue, all around the cities where man
No matter, they are t^'^ '^^ *^aking
uQ .md barren sisters, who aione receive ..
re^ are btui trembling in the hotho And they will
there, just the same, in the flooded fields, in the su'
and adorning the roads with their simj
snows shall have covered the countn^side. No one
ne gathers thera.
reads them under f< -iiy> i^owcvc
ig ago, they alone represented nature s gladncf
er, a few hundred'^^-'
;illy kinswomen had cow
fni Japan, or
unt ccognizabic,
gladness to sorr^
porch, the casth
1 the woods. Bui
throned. They have i
^iii li show al'
brilliant^
:ind
in
:aed the cottage-
ers' footsteps
*■-
/
\
t
'A
FIELD FLOWERS
gratitude, his studious fondness, all that he owed them, all
that they gave him are there contained, like an enduring
aroma held in hollow pearls. And so they bear names of
queens, shepherdesses, virgins, princesses, sylphs and fairies,
which flow from the lips like a caress, a lightning-flash, a
kiss, a murmur of love. Our language, I think, contains
nothing that is better-, more daintily-, more lovingly-
named than these homely flowers. Here the word clothes
the idea almost always with care, with light precision, with
wonderful aptness. It is like an ornate and transparent
drapery that moulds the form which it embraces and has the
proper shade, perfume and sound. Call to mind the Daisy,
the Violet, the Bluebottle, the Poppy, or, rather, Coquelicot:
the name is the flower itself. How marvellous, for instance,
that sort of cry and crest of light and joy, "Coquelicot!" to
designate the scarlet flower which the scientists crush under
this barbarous title: ''Papaver rhceasr See the Primrose,
or Primula, the Periwinkle, the Anemone, the Wild Hya-
cinth, the blue Speedwell, or Veronica, the Forget-me-not, the
Wild Bindweed, or Convolvulus, the Iris, the Harebell, or
Campanula: their name depicts them by equivalents and anal-
ogies which the greatest poets but rarely light upon. It
[147]
NEWS OF SPRING
represents all their ingenuous and visible soul. It hides itself,
stoops, rises to the ear even as those who bear it lie concealed,
bend forward, or stand erect in the corn and in the grass.
These are the few names that are known to all of us ; we
do not know the others, though their music describes with
the same gentleness, the same happy genius, flowers which
we see by every wayside and upon all the paths. Thus, at
this moment, that is to say at the end of the month in which
the ripe corn falls beneath the reaper's sickle, the banks of
the roads are a pale violet: it is the sweet and gentle Scabious,
who has blossomed at last, discreet, aristocratically poor and
modestly beautiful, as her title, that of a mist-veiled precious
stone, proclaims. Around her, a treasure lies scattered: it
is the Ranunculus, or Buttercup, who has two names, even as
he has two lives ; for he is at once the virgin innocent who cov-
ers the grass with sunflake and the fearsome and venomous
wizard who deals out death to heedless animals. Again we
have the Yarrow and the Sneezewort, little flowers, once use-
ful, that march along the roads like silent school-girls, clad
in a dull uniform; the vulgar and innumerous Bird's Ground-
sel; her big brother, the Lamb's Lettuce of the fields; then the
dangerous Black Nightshade; the Bitter-sweet, who hides
[148]
KINGCUPS
i as those v
and erect in the corn
tr lew names that are k-
. the others, though their niu:
the same gentleness, the same happy genius, iiov
w* tec by every wayside and u] Thus
s moment, that is to say ai the end of th-
P'^ C'Tn falls beneath tl'^ r«^-:i ' nnk
uie roaas are a pale vioitt: it
has blossomed at last, di
modestly beauti 'ler title, that
stone, proclaim V^.pdg^1gr)pv!j^^
is the Ranunculus, or But-
s tne ;
deals
fui, that ma
in a dull uniform; the vulgar and
icl; her big brother ^^^-^^ ^ .n.t/c j
"angerous Black i\ignisaaa.
[ '4« ;
FIELD FLOWERS
herself; the creeping Dock-leaved Knotgrass: all the dowdy
families, wearing with a resigned smile the grey and practical
livery of Autumn, which already is felt to be at hand.
But, among those of March, April, May, June, July, re-
member the glad and festive names, the springtime syllables,
the vocables of azure and dawn, of moonlight and of sun-
shine! Here is the Snowdrop, or Winter-bell, who heralds
the thaw; the Stitchwort, or Satin-flower, who greets the first-
communicants along the hedgerows with their leaves as yet
indeterminate and uncertain, like a diaphanous green mist.
Here are the Wild Sage and the drooping Columbine; the
Elecampane, the Sheep's-bit, the Angelica, the Fennel-flower;
the Gilly-flower, dressed like the servant of a village-priest;
the Osmond, who is a king fern; the Wood-rush, the Wall
Parmelia, the Venus' Looking-glass; the Esula or Wood
Surge, mysterious and full of smouldering fire; the Winter
Cherry, whose fruit ripens in a red lantern ; the Henbane, the
Deadly Nightshade, the Foxglove: poisonous queens, veiled
Cleopatras of the untilled places and the cool woods. And
then, again, the Chamomile, the good capped Sister with a
[151]
NEWS OF SPRING
thousand smiles, bringing the health-giving brew in an earth-
enware bowl; the Pimpernel and the Coronilla, the cold Mint
and the purple Thyme, the Sainfoin and the Eyebright, the
Moon flower, or Ox-eye Daisy, the mauve Gentian and the
blue Verbena, the lance-shaped Horsetail, the Cinquefoil, or
Potentilla, the Greenweed, or Dyer's Broom. ... To tell
their names is to recite a poem of grace and light. We have
reserved for them the most charming, the purest, the clearest
sounds and all the musical gladness of the language. One
would think that they were the persons of a play, the dancers
and choristers of an immense fairy-scene, more beautiful,
more startling and more supernatural than the scenes that
unfold themselves on Prosperous Island, at the Court of
Theseus or in the Forest of Arden. And the fair actress in
this dumb and endless comedy — goddesses, angels, she-devils,
princesses and witches, virgins and courtezans, queens and
shepherd-girls — carry in the folds of their names the magic
sheen of innumerous dawns, of innumerous springtimes wit-
nessed by forgotten men, even as they also carry the memory of
thousands of deep or fleeting emotions which were felt before
them by generations that have disappeared, leaving no other
trace.
[152]
SNOWDROPS
«
■%v\ : rh crnel and the l .ia, the
vme, the Sainfoin anrl '^^^^ Fv,^
•uu o' Ox-eye Daisy, the mauve
blue Verbena, the lance-shaped Horsetail, t uctoii,
Potentilia, the Greenweed, or Dyer's Broom. To tell
their names is to recite a poem of grace and light. We have
reserved for them the most charn purest, the cleai. i
■'-"'^ ill the musical gladi ^^r
iiJiiiK that they were the pcr^oiis ui a pia
\d choristers of an immense fairy-scene, more beautiful,
more startling and more supernatural than tl'
unfold themselves on Rs©pia«l*ofeJand, at the Co
Theseus or in the Forest of J\
. ::ssi;^ ana witcaes, virgins ana CJuirczans, que:
shepherd ry in the folds of their nan
sheen of innumerous dawns, of innumerous springtinj
nessed by forgotten en as they also carry the tnemorv
thousands of deep or fleeting emotions w
them by gcneratioos that have ''
trace.
[152]
FIELD FLOWERS
3
They are interesting and incomprehensible. They are
vaguely called the ^Weeds." They serve no purpose. Here
and there, a few, in very old villages, retain the spell of con-
tested virtues. Here and there, one of them, down at the
bottom of the apothecary's or herbalist's jars, still awaits the
coming of the sick man faithful to the infusions of tradition.
But sceptic medicine will have none of them. No longer are
they gathered according to the olden rites; and the science of
"Simples" is dying out in the housewife's memory. A merci-
less war is waged upon them. The husbandman fears them;
the plough pursues them; the gardener hates them and has
armed himself against them with clashing weapons : the spade
and the rake, the hoe and the scraper, the weeding-hook, the
mattock. Along the highroads, their last refuge, the passer-by
crushes and the waggon bruises them. In spite of all, they
are there: permanent, assured, teeming, peaceful; and not one
but answers the summons of the sun. They follow the seasons
without swerving by an hour. They take no account of man,
who exhausts himself in conquering them, and, so soon as he
rests, they spring up in his footsteps. They live on, audacious,
immortal, untamable. They have peopled our flower-beds
[155]
NEWS OF SPRING
with extravagant and unnatural daughters; but they, the poor
mothers, have remained what they were a hundred thousand
years ago. They have not added a fold to their petals, re-
ordered a pistil, altered a shade, nor invented a new perfume.
They keep the secret of a stubborn mission. They are the
indelible primitives. The soil is theirs since its origin. They
represent, in brief, an invariable thought, an obstinate desire,
an essential smile of the Earth.
That is why it is well to question them. They have evi-
dently something to tell us. And, then, let us not forget that
they were the first — with the sunrises and the autumns, with
the springs and the sunsets, with the song of the birds, with
the hair, the glance and the divine movements of women — to
teach our fathers that there are useless and beautiful things
upon this globe. . . .
[156]
CHRYSANTHEMUMS
CHRYSANTHEMUMS
I
EVERY year, in November, at the season that follows
on the hour of the dead, the crowning and majestic
hour of Autumn, reverently I go to visit the chrys-
antheumums in the places where chance offers them to my
sight. For the rest, it matters little where they are shown to
me by the good will of travel or of sojourn. They are, indeed,
the most universal, the most diverse of flowers; but their di-
versity and surprises are, so to speak, concerted, like those of
fashion, in arbitrary Edens. At the same moment, even as
with silks, laces, jewels and curls, a voice composed of sky and
light gives the password in time and space; and, docile as the
most beautiful of women, simultaneously, in every country, in
every latitude, the flowers obey the sacred decree.
It is enough, then, to enter at random one of those crystal
museums in which their somewhat funereal riches are dis-
played under the harmonious veil of a November day. We
at once grasp the dominant idea, the obstrusive beauty, the
conscious effort of the year in this special world, strange and
[159]
NEWS OF SPRING
privileged even in the midst of the strange and privileged
v^orld of flowers. And we ask ourselves if this new idea is a
profound and really necessary idea on the part of the sun, the
earth, life, autumn, or man.
Yesterday, then, I went to admire the year's gentle and
gorgeous floral feast, the last which the snows of December
and January, like a broad belt of peace, sleep, silence and
oblivion, separate from the delicious festivals that commence
again with the germination, powerful already, though hardly
visible, that seeks the light in February.
They are there, under the immense transparent domes, the
noble flowers of the month of fogs ; they are there, at the royal
meeting-place, all the grave Autumn fairies, whose dances and
attitudes seem to have been struck motionless with a magic
word. The eye that recognizes them and has learned to love
them perceives, at the first pleased glance, that they have
actively and dutifully continued to evolve towards their un-
certain ideal. Go back for a moment to their modest origin:
recall the poor buttercup of not so long ago, the humble little
blush-red or damask rose that still smiles sadly in the scanty
[i6o]
CHRYSANTHEMUMS
\ wc ask
r iiccessary ide,
earU- .icuinu, or man.
Yesterday, then, I went to admire the
rr^cous floral feast, the i le sr
anuary, like a br ^^'^ '>
oiivion, separate from uic a
) T th the germination, p ihough hardly
^ -H.'::. that seel-
They are ther<^ ^
noble flowen
yueeting-placc.
attitudes seem to I inagic
vnrd. The ey^
i perceives, at th« please(! lat th.
f']y and dutifully continued
^f^^j Go back for a momr
• poor buttercup of i
b - >i» icd or damaSk rose that stili smii
[ 160I
CHRYSANTHEMUMS
garden-patches of our villages, beside the roads filled with dead
leaves; compare with them these enormous masses and fleeces
of snow, these disks and globes of red copper, these spheres of
old silver, these trophies of alabaster and amethyst, this de-
lirious prodigy of petals which seems to be trying to exhaust
to its last riddle the world of autumnal shapes and shades
which Winter entrusts to the bosom of the sleeping woods ; let
the unwonted and unexpected varieties pass before your eyes;
admire and appraise them.
Here, for instance, is the marvellous family of the stars:
flat stars, bursting stars, diaphanous stars, solid and fleshy stars,
milky ways and constellations of the earth that correspond
with those of the firmament. Here are the proud egret-
plumes that await the diamonds of the dew; here, to put our
dreams to shame, the fascinating poem of unreal tresses : mad
and miraculous tresses; honeyed moonbeams, golden bushes,
and flaming whirlpools; curls of fair and smiling maidens, of
fleeing nymphs, of passionate bacchantes, of swooning sirens,
of cold virgins, of frolicsome children, which angels, mothers,
fauns, lovers have caressed with their calm or quivering hands.
And then here, pell-mell, are the monsters that cannot be
classed: hedgehogs, spiders, frizzles, curly endives, pine-
[163]
NEWS OF SPRING
apples, pompons, rosettes, shells, vapours, breaths, stalactites of
ice and falling snow, a throbbing hail of sparks, wings, chips,
fluffy, pulpy, fleshy things, wattles, bristles, funeral piles and
sky-rockets, bursts of light, a stream of fire and sulphur. . . .
3
Now that the shapes have capitulated comes the question
of conquering the region of the proscribed colours, of the
reserved shades, which Autumn, it would seem, denies to the
flowers that represent it. Lavishly it bestows on them all the
wealth of the twilight and the night, all the riches of the
vintage-time: it gives them all the mud-brown work of the rain
in the woods, all the silvery fashionings of the mist in the
plains, of the frost and snow in the gardens. It permits them,
above all, to draw at will upon the inexhaustible treasures of
the dead leaves and the expiring forest. It allows them to
deck themselves with the golden sequins, the bronze medals,
the silver buckles, the copper spangles, the fairy feathers, the
powdered amber, the burnt topazes, the neglected pearls, the
smoked amethysts, the calcined garnets, all the dead but still
resplendent jewellery which the north wind heaps up in the
hollow of ravines and ruts ; but it insists that they shall remain
[164]
CHRYSANTHEMUMS
faithful to their old masters and wear the livery of the drab
and weary months that give them birth. It does not permit
them to betray those masters and to don the princely shot
garments of Spring and sunrise ; and, if, sometimes, it suffers
a pink, this is only on condition that it be borrowed from the
cold lips, the pale brow of the veiled and afflicted virgin pray-
ing on a tomb. It forbids most strictly the tints of Summer,
of too youthful, ardent and serene a life, of a health too joyous
and exuberant. In no case will it consent to hilarious ver-
milions, impetuous scarlets, imperious and dazzling purples.
As for the blues, from the azure of the dawn to the indigo of
the sea and the deep lakes, from the periwinkle to the borage
and the larkspur, they are banished under pain of death.
4
Nevertheless, thanks to some inadvertence on the part of
nature, the most unusual colour in the world of flowers and
the most severely forbidden, the colour which the corolla of
the poisonous spurge is almost alone in wearing in the city
of umbels, petals and calyces, green, the colour exclusively
reserved for the servile and nutrient leaves, has penetrated
within the jealously-guarded precincts. True, it has slipped
[165]
NEWS OF SPRING
in only by favour of a lie, as a traitor, a spy, a livid deserter.
It is a forsworn yellow, cowardly steeped in the trembling
azure of a moonbeam. It is still of the night and false, like
the opal depths of the sea; it shows itself only in shifting
patches at the tip of the petals ; it is elusive and anxious, frail
and deceptive, but undeniable. It has made its entrance, it
exist, it asserts itself; it will be daily more fixed and more
decided; and, through the breach which it has contrived in
the citadels of light, all the joys and all the splendours of the
banned prism will hurl themselves into the virgin domain,
there to prepare unwonted feasts for our eyes. This is
great tidings and a memorable conquest in the land of flowers.
5
We must not think that it is childish thus to interest one's
self in the capricious forms, the unwritten shades of a flower
that bears no fruit; nor must we treat those who seek to make
it more beautiful or more strange as La Bruyere once treated
the lover of the tulip or the plum. Do you remember the
charming page?
"The lover of flowers has a garden in the suburbs, where
he spends all his time from sunrise to sunset. You see him
[i66]
CHRYSANTHEMUMS
standing there and would think that he had taken root in the
midst of his tulips before his 'Solitaire;' he opens his eyes
wide, rubs his hands, stoops down and looks closer at it; it never
before seemed to him so handsome; he is in an ecstasy of joy
and leaves it to go to the 'Orient,' then to the Widow,' from
thence to the 'Cloth of Gold,' on to the 'Agatha,' and at last
returns to the 'Solitaire,' where he remains, is tired out, sits
down and forgets his dinner; he looks at the tulip and ad-
mires its shade, shape, colour, sheen and edges, its beautiful
form and calyx; but God and nature are not in his thoughts,
for they do not go beyond the bulb of his tulip, which he
would not sell for a thousand crowns, though he will give
it to you for nothing when tulips are no longer in fashion and
carnations are all the rage. This rational being, who has a
soul and professes some religion, comes home tired and half
starved, but very pleased with his day's work; he has seen some
tulips.
"Talk to another of the healthy look of the crops, of a
plentiful harvest, of a good vintage, and you will find that
he cares only for fruit and understands not a single word that
you say; then turn to figs and melons; tell him that this year
the pear-trees are so heavily laden with fruit that the branches
[167]
NEWS OF SPRING
almost break, that there is abundance of peaches, and you ad-
dress him in a language which he completely ignores ; and he
will not answer you, for his sole hobby is plum-trees. Do not
even speak to him of your plum-trees, for he is fond of only
a certain kind and laughs and sneers at the mention of any
others ; he takes you to his tree and cautiously gathers this ex-
quisite plum, divides it, gives you one half, keeps the other
himself and exclaims, ^How delicious! Do you like it? Is
it not heavenly? You cannot find its equal anywhere;' and
then his nostrils dilate, and he can hardly contain his joy and
pride under an appearance of modesty. What a wonderful
person, never enough praised and admired, whose name will
be handed down to future ages ! Let me look at his mien and
shape, while he is still in the land of the living, that I may
study the features and the countenance of a man who, alone
among mortals, is the happy possessor of such a plum."
Well, La Bruyere is wrong. We readily forgive him
his mistake, for the sake of the pleasant window which he,
alone among the authors of his time, opens upon the unex-
pected gardens of the seventeenth century. The fact none the
less remains that it is to his somewhat bigoted florist, to his
somewhat frenzied horticulturist that we owe our exquisite
[i68]
CHRYSANTHEMUMS
flower-beds, our more varied, more abundant, more luscious
vegetables, our ever more delicious fruits. Contemplate, for
instance, around the chrysanthemums, the marvels that ripen
nowadays in the humblest gardens, among the long branches
wisely restrained by the patient, spreading espaliers. Less
than a century ago, they were unknown; and we owe them to
the innumerable and infinitesimal exertions of a legion of
small seekers, all more or less hampered, all more or less
absurd.
It is thus that man acquires nearly all his riches. There
is nothing trivial in nature; and he who becomes impassioned
of a flower, a blade of grass, a butterfly's wing, a nest, a shell,
wraps his passion around a small thing that always contains a
great truth. To succeed in modifying the appearance of a
flower is an insignificant act in itself, if you will; but reflect
upon it, for however short a while, and it becomes gigantic.
In thus succeeding, do we not violate or divert profound,
perhaps essential and, in any case, time-honoured laws? Do
we not exceed too-easily-accepted limits? Do we not directly
intrude our ephemeral will on that of the eternal forces?
Does not this suggest our possession of a singular power, an
almost supernatural power? And, although it is wise to
[169]
NEWS OF SPRING
guard against over- ambitious dreams, does not this allow us
to hope that we may perhaps learn to elude or to transgress
other laws no less time-honoured, more akin to ourselves and
far more important? For, in the end, all things hold to-
gether; all things go hand to hand; all things obey the same
invisible principles; all things share the same spirit, the same
substance in the terrifying and wonderful problem; and the
most modest victory gained in the matter of a flower may one
day disclose to us an infinity of the untold.
6
That is why I love the chrysanthemum ; that is why I fol-
low its evolution with a brotherly interest. It is, among
familiar plants, the most submissive, the most docile, the most
tractable and the most attentive of all that we meet on life's
long way. It bears flowers impregnated with the thought
and will of man: flowers already human, so to speak. And,
if the vegetable world is some day to reveal to us one of the
messages that we are awaiting, perhaps it will be through this
flower of the dead that we shall learn the first secret of ex-
istence, even as, in another kingdom, it is probably through
the dog, the almost thinking guardian of our homes, that we
shall discover the mystery of animal life. . . .
[170]
OLD-FASHIONED FLOWERS
OLD-FASHIONED FLOWERS
I
THIS morning, when I went to look at my flowers,
surrounded by the white fence which protects them
from the gentle cows grazing in the meadow, I saw
again in my mind all that blossoms in the woods, the fields,
the gardens, the orangeries and the green-houses; and I
thought of all that we owe to the world of marvels which the
bees visit.
Can we conceive what humanity would be if it did not
know the flowers? If these did not exist, if they had always
been hidden from our gaze, as are probably a thousand no
less fairy sights that are all around us, but invisible to our
eyes, would our character, our moral system, our sense of
the beautiful, our aptitude for happiness be quite the same?
We should, it is true, have other splendid manifestations of
luxury, exuberance and grace in nature ; other dazzling efforts
of the infinite forces : sun, stars, moonlight, sky and sea, dawns
and twilights, mountain and plain, forest and river, light and
trees and, lastly, nearer to us, birds, precious stones and
woman. These are the ornaments of our planet. Yet, save
NEWS OF SPRING
for the last three, which belong as it were to the same smile
of nature, how grave, austere, almost sad would be the educa-
tion of our eye without the softening influence which the
flowers impart! Suppose, for a moment, that our globe knew
them not: a great region, the most enchanted region in our
happier cosmos, would be destroyed, or rather would not be
discovered. All of a delightful sense would sleep for ever
in our harder and more desert hearts and in our imagination
stripped of worshipful images. The infinite world of colours
and shades would have been but incompletely revealed to us
by a few rents in the sky. The miraculous harmonies of light
at play, ceaselessly inventing new joys, seeming to revel in
itself, would be unknown to us ; for the flowers first broke up
the prism and formed the most subtle portion of our sight.
And the magic garden of perfumes : who would have opened
its gate to us? A few grasses, a few gums, a few fruits, the
breath of the dawn, the smell of the night and the sea would
have told us that beyond our eyes and ears there existed a
shut paradise where the air which we breathe changes into
delights for which we could have found no name. Consider
also all that the voice of human happiness would lack! One
of the blessed heights of our soul would be almost dumb, if
[174]
DELPHINIUMS AND FOXGLOVES
w s
vvitHout UiC soUeniiig
Suppose, for cm, th;
m not: a great region, anted
happier cosmos, would be
^ri^verf^(\ All rjf r< iip^'r!.-
ripped of worshipful images,
.\d shades would have been ' ieteiy
ew rent
play, .
iiili a:.
\ud the ma,
gate to us
v^ath of the dm
• that I
aeiigiits lor wliicli
10 all that the voice <
the blessed heights of our soul would be dumb
r 174.1
^
A
\
t
. N.
':.,M^ll-^^.-^.
OLD-FASHIONED FLOWERS
the flowers had not, since centuries, fed with their beauty the
language which we speak and the thoughts that endeavour to
crystallize the most precious hours of life. The whole vo-
cabulary, all the impressions of love are impregnate with their
breath, nourished with their smile. When we love, the
memories of all the flowers that we have seen and smelt
hasten to people with their recognized charms the conscious-
ness of a feeling whose happiness, but for them, would have no
more form than the horizon of the sea or sky. They have ac-
cumulated within us, since our childhood and even before it,
in the souls of our fathers, an immense treasure, the nearest
to our joys, upon which we draw each time that we wish to
make more real the clement minutes of our life. They have
created and spread in our world of sentiment the fragrant at-
mosphere in which love delights.
That is why I love above all the simplest, the commonest,
the oldest and the most antiquated: those which have a long
human past behind them, a large array of kind and consoling
actions ; those which have lived with us for hundreds of years
and which form part of ourselves, because they put something
[ 177 ]
NEWS OF SPRING
of their grace, something of their gaiety into the souls of our
ancestors.
But where do they hide themselves? They are becoming
rarer than those which we call rare flowers to-day. They lead
a secret and precarious existence. It seems as though we were
on the point of losing them ; and perhaps there are some which,
discouraged at last, have lately disappeared, of which the
seeds have died under old ruins, which will never again know
the dew of the gardens and which we shall find only in very
ancient books, on the bright grass-plots of azure miniatures or
along the saffron-tinted lawns of the Primitives.
They are driven from the borders and the flaunting
flower-beds by arrogant strangers from Peru, the Cape, China,
Japan. The have two pitiless enemies in particular. The
first of these is the crowding and prolific Begonia Tuberosa,
that swarms in the beds like a tribe of turbulent fighting-cocks,
with innumerous combs. It is handsome, but insolent and a
little artificial ; and, whatever the silence and meditation of the
hour, under the sun and under the moon, in the intoxication of
the day and the solemn peace of the night, it sounds its clarion
and proclaims a monotonous, gaudy and scentless victory.
The other is the Double Geranium, not quite so indiscreet, but
C178]
OLD-FASHIONED FLOWERS
indefatigable also and extraordinarily courageous. It would
appear desirable were it less lavish. These two, with the help
of a few craftier strangers and of the plants with coloured
leaves that form those swollen mosaics which at present spoil
the fair lines of most of our lawns, these two have gradually
ousted their native sisters from the spots which these had so
long brightened with their familiar smiles. They no longer
have the right to receive the guest with artless little cries of
welcome at the gilded gates of the mansion. They are for-
bidden to prattle near the steps, to twitter in the marble vases,
to hum their tune around the fountains, to lisp their dialect
along the borders. A few of them have been relegated to the
kitchen-garden, in the neglected, but delightful corner oc-
cupied by the aromatic plants and simples : the Sage, the Tar-
ragon, the Fennel and the Thyme, old retainers, they too dis-
missed from service and merely pensioned through a sort of
pity or mechanical tradition. Others have taken refuge by
the stables and the coach-house, near the low door of the
kitchen or the cellar, where they crowd humbly like impor-
tunate beggars, hiding their bright dresses among the weeds
and holding in their timid perfumes as best they may, so as
not to attract attention.
[179]
NEWS OF SPRING
But, even there, the Pelargonium, red with indignation,
and the Begonia, crimson with rage, came to surprise and
hustle the unoffending little band ; and they fled to the farms,
the graveyards, the little gardens of the rectories, of the old
maids' houses and of the country convents. And now hardly
anywhere, save in the oldest forgotten villages around tumble-
down cottages, far from the railways and the nursery-garden-
er's overweening hot-houses, do we find them again with their
natural smile: not wearing a driven, panting and hunted look,
but peaceful, calm, restful, plentiful, careless and at home.
And, as in former times, in the coaching days, from the top of
the stone wall that surrounds the house, through the rails of
the white fence or from the sill of the windows enlivened by a
caged bird, on the motionless road where none passes save the
eternal forces of life, they see Spring come and Autumn, rain
and sun, the butterflies and the bees, silence and darkness, fol-
lowed by the light of the moon.
3
Brave old flowers! Wall-flowers, Gillyflowers, King-
cups, Stocks! For, even as the wild flowers, from which a
trifle, a ray of beauty, a drop of perfume, divides them, they
[i8o]
OLD-FASHIONED FLOWERS
have charming names, the softest in the language ; and each of
them proudly bears three or four, like so many tiny, simple
ex-votos, or so many medals bestowed by the gratitude of men.
You Gillyflowers, who sing among the crumbling walls and
brighten the sorrowing stones ; you Garden Primroses, Primu-
las or Cowslips, Hyacinths, Crocuses and Cinerarias, Crown
Imperials, Scented Violets, Lilies of the Valley, Forget-me-
nots, Daisies and Periwinkles, Poet's Narcissus, Pheasant's-
Eyes, Bear's-Ears, Alyssum, Lady's Cushions, Anemones : it is
through you that the months that come before the leaf-time —
February, March, April — translate into smiles which men
can understand the first tidings and the first mysterious kisses
of the sun! You are frail and chilly and yet as brazen as a
happy thought. You make young the grass; you are fresh
as the water that flows in the azure cups which the dawn
distributes over the greedy buds, ephemeral as the dreams of a
child, almost wild still and almost spontaneous, yet already
marked by the too-precocious brilliancy, the too-flaming nim-
bus, the too-pensive grace that overwhelm the flowers which
yield obedience to man.
4
But here, innumerous, disordered, many-coloured, tu-
NEWS OF SPRING
multuous, drunk with dawns and noons, come the luminous
dancing bands of Summer's daughters ! Young maidens with
white veils and elderly spinsters in violet ribbons, school-girls
home for the holidays, first-communicants, pale nuns, dis-
hevelled romps, gossips and prudes. Here is the Marigold,
who breaks the green of the borders with her brightness.
Here is the Chamomile, like a nosegay of snow, beside her
unwearying brothers, the Garden Chrysanthemums, whom
we must not confuse with the Japanese Chrysanthemums of
Autumn. The Annual Helianthus, or Sunflower, towers like
a priest raising the monstrance over the lesser folk in prayer
and strives to resemble the orb which he adores. The Poppy
exerts himself to fill with light his cup torn by the morning
wind. The rough Larkspur, in his peasant's smock, who
thinks himself more beautiful than the sky, looks down upon
the Dwarf Convolvuluses, who reproach him spitefully with
putting too much blue into the azure of his flowers. The
Virginia Stock, arch and demure in her gown of jaconet, like
the little servant-maids of Dordrecht or Leyden, seems to wash
the borders of the beds with innocence. The Mignonette hides
herself in her laboratory and silently distils perfumes which
give us a foretaste of the air that is breathed on the threshold
[182]
POPPIES
urrHters! Youn^ maidens
' s, hrsi-cummuiiicauib, pdic jh
ssips and prudes. Here is the M
hu breaks the green of the borders with her bri
the Chamomile, like a nosegay of snow, be^
_ ing brothers, the Garden Chrvsanthcmi
- '^ust not confuse with the Japa '^f^^^aiM
Autumn. The Annual Helianthus, or ouimuvvci,
est raising the monst the lesser
nd strives to resemble th
xcrts himself to fill
wind. The r<
-links h" -^^
le Dwari uoavoivuiuses, wao :
uring too much blue into the azure oi his
V i^nia Stock, arch and demure
> rut servant-maids of Dordrecht
t ^ vt%ier^ nf the beds with innocence. The V
ste of the air that is breauiea on uie u
[ 182 ]
OLD-FASHIONED FLOWERS
of Paradise. The Peonies, who have drunk their imprudent
fill of the sun, burst with enthusiasm and bend forward to
meet the coming apoplexy. The Scarlet Flax traces a blood-
stained furrow that guards the walks; and the Portulaca, or
Sun-plant, the wealthy cousin of the Purslane, creeping like
a moss, studies to cover with mauve, amber or pink taffeta the
soil that has remained bare at the foot of the tall stalks. The
chub-faced Dahlia, a little round, a little stupid, carves out of
soap, lard or wax his stiff and formal pompons, which will
be the ornament of the village holiday. The old, paternal
Phlox, standing amid the clusters, lavishes the loud laughter
of his jolly, easy-going colours. The Mallows, or Lavateras,
like demure misses, feel the pale pink of mantling blushes
mount to their corollas at the slightest breath. The Nas-
turtium paints his water-colours, or screams like a parakeet
climbing the bars of its cage; and the Garden Mallow, Althaea
Rosea, Hollyhock, Jacob's Rod, riding the high horse of her
many names, flaunts her cockades of a flesh silkier than a
maiden's breasts. The Snapdragon and the almost trans-
parent Balsam are more timorous and awkward and fearfully
press their flowers against their stalks.
Next, in the discreet corner of the old families, are
[185]
NEWS OF SPRING
crowded the Long-leaved Veronica; the Red Potentilla; the
African Marigold; the ancient Lychnis, or Bachelor's Button;
the Mournful Widow, or Purple Scabious; the Foxglove, or
Digitalis, who shoots up like a melancholy rocket; the Euro-
pean Aquilegia, or Columbine ; the Viscaria, who, on a long,
slim neck, lifts a small ingenuous, quite round face to ad-
mire the sky; the lurking Honesty, who secretly manufactures
"Pope's money," those pale, flat crown-pieces wherewith, no
doubt, the elves and fairies by moonlight carry on their trade
in spells; lastly, the Pheasant's-Eye the red Valerian, or
Jupiter's-Beard, the Sweet William and the old Carnation,
that was cultivated long ago by the Grand Conde in his exile.
Beside these, above, all around, on the walls, in the
hedges, among the arbours, along the branches, like a crowd
of frolicking monkeys and birds, the climbing plants make
merry, perform feats of gymnastics, play at swinging, at losing
and recovering their balance, at falling, at flying, at looking
into space, at reaching beyond the tree-tops to kiss the sky.
Here we have the Scarlet Runner and the Sweet Pea, quite
proud at being no longer included among the vegetables ; the
modest Convolvulus ; the Honeysuckle, whose scent represents
the soul of the dew; the Clematis and the Wistaria; while, at
[i86]
OLD-FASHIONED FLOWERS
the windows, between the white curtains, along the stretched
string, the Campanula, surnamed Pyramidalis, works such
miracles, throws out sheaves and twists garlands formed of a
thousand uniform flowers so prodigiously immaculate and
transparent that they who see it for the first time, refusing to
believe their eyes, want to touch with their finger the bluey
marvel, cool as a fountain, pure as a spring, unreal as a dream.
Meanwhile, in a cluster of sunbeams, the great white
Lily, the old lord of the gardens, the only true prince among
all the commonalty issuing from the kitchen-garden, the
ditches, the copses, the pools and the moors, among the
strangers come from none knows where, with his invariable
six-petalled silver chalice, whose patent of nobility dates back
to that of the gods themselves: the immemorial Lily raises
his ancient sceptre, august, inviolate, which creates around
it a zone of chastity, silence and light.
5
I have seen them, those whom I have named and as many
whom I have forgotten, all thus collected in the garden of
an old sage, the same that taught me to love the bees. They
displayed themselves in flower-plots and beds, in symmetrical
[187]
NEWS OF SPRING
borders, ellipses, oblongs, quincunxes and lozenges, sur-
rounded by box hedges, red bricks, delft tiles, like precious
things contained in ordered receptacles similar to those which
we find in the discoloured engravings that illustrate the works
of the old Dutch poet, Jacob Cats, or of good Abbot Sanderus,
who, about the middle of the seventeenth century, drew and
described in his Flandria Illustrata all the country-seats of
Flanders and never failed to show his gratitude by topping
with a magnificent plume or bush of smoke the chimneys of
those great manor-houses where he considered the hospitality
generous and approved of the good cheer. And so the flowers
were drawn up in rows, some according to their kinds, others
according to their shapes and shades, while others, lastly,
mingled, according to the ever happy chances of the wind and
sun, the most hostile and murderous colours, in order to show
that nature acknowledges no dissonance and that all that lives
creates its own harmony.
From its twelve rounded windows, with their glittering
panes, their muslin curtains, their broad green shutters, the
long, painted house, pink and gleaming as a shell, watched
them wake at dawn and throw off the brisk diamonds of the
dew and close at night under the blue darkness that falls from
[i88]
OLD-FASHIONED FLOWERS
the stars. One felt that, solidly planted between two clear
ditches that lost themselves in the distance of the immense
pasturage dotted with motionless cows, the house took an in-
telligent pleasure in this gentle daily fairy-play, while, by the
roadside, a proud mill, bending forward like a preacher, made
familiar signs with its paternal sails to the passers-by from the
village.
6
Has this earth of ours a fairer ornament of its hours of
leisure than the care of flowers? It was beautiful to see thus
collected for the pleasure of the eyes, around the dwelling of
my placid friend, the splendid throng that distils the light to
extract from it marvellous colours, honey and perfumes. He
found there translated into visible and positive joys, at the
gates of his house, the scattered, fleeting and almost intangible
delights of Summer: the voluptuous air, the balmy nights, the
shimmering sunbeams, the glad hours, the confidences of the
dawn, the whispering intentness of the azure space. He en-
joyed not only their dazzling presence; he also hoped — proba-
bly unwisely, so deep and vague is that mystery — he also
hoped, by dint of questioning them, to surprise, with their aid,
I know not what secret law or idea of nature, I know not what
[189]
NEWS OF SPRING
essential thought of the universe, which perhaps betrays itself
in those ardent moments wherein it strives to please other
beings, to beguile other lives and to create beauty. . . .
7
Old-fashioned flowers, I said. I was wrong; for they
are not so old. When we study their history and investigate
their pedigrees, we learn with surprise that most of them, down
to the simplest and commonest, are newcomers, freedmen,
exiles, upstarts, visitors, foreigners. Any botanical treatise
will reveal their origins. The Tulip, for instance (remember
La Bruyere's ^'Solitary,'' ''Oriental," "Agate" and "Cloth of
Gold"), came from Constantinople in the sixteenth century.
The Buttercup, the Moonwort, or Honesty, the Caltrop, the
Balsam, the Fuchsia, the African Marigold, or Tagetes
Erecta, the Rose Campion, or Lychnis Coronaria, the Varie-
gated Wolf's-bane, the Amarantus Caudatus, or Love-lies-
bleeding, the Hollyhock and the Campanula Pyramidalis
arrived at about the same time from the Indies, Mexico,
Persia, Syria or Italy. The Pansy appears in 1613; the Yel-
low Alyssum in 1710; the Scarlet Flax in 1819; the Purple
Scabious in 1629; the Chinese Saxifrage in 1771 ; the Long-
[190]
TULIPS
5 tnc u
dent mom
vcs and to create i
Uld-tashioned flowers, 1 s
are not so old. Whe ady their hist-
their pedigrees, we learn with su^ of the;
to the simplest and commonest, are ne\^
iin<if.3rf«; v?^;itf>'"s foreifi^nf"r<; Anv l.!>f;)r-
CVUiil
I I!) I
Li Bruyert
Gold"), ca
The Butter
Balsnm, thi
i ■,..... the R(
gated Wolf's-baiic, i
bleeding, the Hollyi
ed at about the
Syria or Italy. 1
• nv Alvssum in 1710; the S
1629; the Chine*^ '
[190^
ppea
Tn^eii
OLD-FASHIONED FLOWERS
leaved Veronica in 1731. The Perennial Phlox is a little
older. The China Pink made her entrance into our gardens
about the year 171 3. The Garden Pink is of modern date.
The Flowering Purslane did not make her appearance till
1828; the Scarlet Sage till 1822. The Ageratum, now so
plentiful and so popular, is not two centuries old. The
Elichrysum, or Xeranthemum, is even younger. The Zinnia
is just a centenarian. The Scarlet Runner, a native of South
America, and the Sweet Pea, an immigrant from Sicily, num-
ber a little over two hundred years. The Chamomile, whom
we find in the least-known village, has been cultivated only
since 1699. The charming Blue Lobelia of our borders came
to us from the Cape of Good Hope at the time of the French
Revolution. The China Aster, or Reine Marguerite, is dated
1 73 1. The Annual or Drummond's Phlox, now so common,
was sent over from Texas in 1835. The Large-flowered La-
vatera, or Tree- Mallow, who looks so confirmed a native, so
simple a rustic, has blossomed in our northern gardens only
since two centuries and a half; and the Petunia since some
twenty lustres. The Mignonette, the Heliotrope — who would
believe it? — are not two hundred years old. The Dahlia was
born in 1802 ; and the Gladiolus and Gloxinia are of yesterday.
[193]
NEWS OF SPRING
8
What flowers, then, blossomed in the gardens of our
fathers? They were very few, no doubt, and very small and
very humble, scarce to be distinguished from those of the
roads, the fields and the glades. Have you ever observed
the poverty and the monotony, most skilfully disguised, of
the floral decoration of the finest miniatures in our old manu-
scripts? Again, the pictures in our museums, down to the
end of the Renascence period, have only five or six types of
flowers, incessantly repeated, wherewith to enliven the richest
palaces, the most marvellous views of Paradise. Before the
sixteenth century, our gardens were almost bare; and, later,
Versailles itself, Versailles the splendid, could have shown us
only what the poorest village shows to-day. Alone, the
Violet, the Daisy, the Lily of the Valley, the Marigold, the
Poppy, a few Crocuses, a few Irises, a few Colchicums, the
Foxglove, the Valerian, the Larkspur, the Cornflower, the
Wild Pink, the Forget-me-not, the Gillyflower, the Mallow,
the Rose, still almost a Sweetbriar, and the great silver Lily,
the spontaneous ornaments of our woods and of our snow-
frightened, wind-frightened fields: these alone smiled upon
our forefathers, who, for that matter, were unaware of their
[194]
HOLLYHOCKS
blossomed in the gardens
were very few, no doubt, and ven
- V humble, scarce to be distinguished from^t!
S the fields and the glades. Have you cv
c poverty and the monotony, most skilfully d;
the floral decoration of the finest miniatures in our
scripts? Again, the pictures in our museums, d
id of the Renascence period, have only five or ^
.., .;_.. _ntly repeater^ whprpwith to enliven ...
pHiaces, the most marvellous vcvi of Paradise. Be
sixteenth century, our gardens were almost bare; and, .
Versailles itself, V o^Vj.. '^^^^ shown u
only what the poorest village shows to-day. Alone.
Violet, the Daisy, the ^ ^ , Vlarigolrl,
Poppy, a few Crocuse* '^ ^'^^^' TrUp»c -^ f^-v* p .■ 'n*.
Foxglove, the Valerian, tne juaiKb
V¥ild Pink, the Forgct^mc-not, the Giliyii
tie Rose, still almost a Swcetbriar, and
itaneous ornaments of our woods and of oi
frifrhtened, wind-frightened fields: these alone s:
fathers, who, for that matter, were un«*v
[194]
OLD-FASHIONED FLOWERS
poverty. Man had not yet learnt to look around him, to enjoy
the life of nature. Then came the Renascence, the great voy-
ages, the discovery and the invasion of the sunlight. All the
flowers of the world, the successful efforts, the deep, inmost
beauties, the joyful thoughts and wishes of the planet rose
up to us, borne on a shaft of light that, in spite of its heavenly
wonder, issued from our own earth. Man ventured forth
from the cloister, the crypt, the town of brick and stone, the
gloomy stronghold in which he had slept. He went down
into the garden, which became peopled with bees, purple and
perfumes; he opened his eyes, astounded like a child escaping
from the dreams of the night; and the forest, the plain, the
sea and the mountains and, lastly, the birds and the flowers,
that speak in the name of all a more human language which
he already understood, greeted his awakening.
9
Nowadays, perhaps, there are no undiscovered flowers.
We have found all or nearly all the forms which nature lends
to the great dream of love, to the yearning for beauty that stirs
within her bosom. We live, so to speak, in the midst of her
tenderest confidences, of her most touching inventions. We
[197]
NEWS OF SPRING
take an unhoped-for part in the most mysterious festivals of
the invisible force that animates us also. Doubtless, in appear-
ance, it is a small thing that a few more flowers should adorn
our beds. They only scatter a few impotent smiles along the
paths that lead to the grave. It is none the less true that these
are new smiles, which were unknown to those who came before
us; and this recently-discovered happiness spreads generously
in every direction, even to the doors of the most wretched
hovels. The good, the simple flowers are as happy and as
gorgeous in the poor man's strip of garden as in the broad
lawns of the great house; and they surround the cottage with
the supreme beauty of the earth: for the earth has hitherto
produced nothing more beautiful than the flowers. They have
completed the conquest of the globe. Foreseeing the days
when men shall at last have long and equal leisure, already
they promise an equality in healthy enjoyment. Yes, as-
suredly it is a small thing; and everything is a small thing,
if we look at each of our little victories one by one. It is a
small thing, too, in appearance, that we should have a few
more thoughts in our heads, a new feeling at our hearts; and
yet it is just that which is slowly leading us where we hope
to arrive.
[198]
OLD-FASHIONED FLOWERS
After all, we have here a very real fact, namely, that we
live in a world in which flowers are more beautiful and more
numerous than formerly; and perhaps we have the right to
add that the thoughts of men are now more just and greedier
of truth. The smallest joy gained and the smallest grief con-
quered should be marked in the Book of Humanity. It be-
hoves us not to lose sight of any of the evidence that we are
mastering the nameless powers, that we are beginning to wield
some of the laws that govern creation, that we are making
our planet our home, that we are adorning our stay and gradu-
ally broadening the acreage of happiness and of beautiful life.
[199]
►
THE WRATH OF THE BEE
THE WRATH OF THE BEE
V
SINCE the publication of The Life of the Bee, I have
often been asked to throw light upon one of the most
dreaded mysteries of the hive, namely, the psychology
of its inexplicable, sudden and sometimes mortal wrath. A
host of cruel and unjust legends still hovers round the abode
of the yellow fairies of the honey. The bravest among the
guests who visit the garden slacken their pace and lapse into
involuntary silence as they approach the enclosure, blossom-
ing with melilot and mignonette, where buzz the daughters of
the light. Doting mothers keep their children away from it,
as they would keep them away from a smouldering fire or
a nest of adders; nor does the bee-keeping novice, gloved in
leather, veiled in gauze, surrounded by clouds of smoke, face
the mystic citadel without that little unavowed shiver which
men feel before a great battle.
How much sense is there at the back of these traditional
fears? Is the bee really dangerous? Does she allow herself
to be tamed? Is there a risk in approaching the hives?
[203]
NEWS OF SPRING
Ought we to flee or to face their wrath? Has the bee-keeper
some secret or some talisman that preserves him from being
stung? These are the questions that are anxiously put by-
all who have started a timid hive and who are beginning their
apprenticeship.
2
The bee, in general, is neither ill-disposed nor aggressive,
but appears somewhat capricious. She has an unconquerable
antipathy to certain people; she also has her nervous days —
for instance, when a storm is gathering — days on which she
shows herself extremely irritable. She has a most subtle and
delicate sense of smell; she tolerates no perfume and detests,
above all, the scent of human sweat and of alcohol. She is
not to be tamed, in the proper sense of the word; but, whereas
the hives which we seldom visit become crabbed and distrust-
ful, those which we surround with our daily cares soon grow
accustomed to the discreet and prudent presence of man.
Lastly, to enable us to handle the bees almost with impunity,
there exist a certain number of little expedients, which vary
according to circumstances and which can be learnt by prac-
tice alone. But it is time to reveal the great secret of their
wrath.
[204]
\
DISTURBED
hat p
the questions th
'c ^f^irted n timid fnve ri'^d who arc b
The bee, in gen
biif appears somewhat i
'^iv to certain pccHi!
when a s»
be tan
enable us to han
certain number
THE WRATH OF THE BEE
3
The bee, essentially so pacific, so forbearing, who never
stings (unless you touch her) when looting among the flowers,
the bee, once she has returned to her kingdom with the waxen
monuments, either retains her mild and tolerant character,
or grows violent and deadly dangerous, according as her ma-
ternal city be opulent or poor. Here again, as often happens
when we study the manners of this spirited and mysterious
little people, the previsions of human logic are utterly at fault.
It were but natural that the bees should defend desper-
ately treasures so laboriously amassed, a city such as we
find in good apiaries, where the nectar, overflowing the
numberless cells that represent thousands of casks piled
from cellar to garret, streams in golden stalactites along
the rustling walls and sends far afield, in glad response
to the ephemeral perfumes of calyces that are opening,
the more lasting perfume of the honey that keeps alive
the memory of calyces which time has closed. Now this
is not the case. The richer their abode, the less eagerness do
they show to fight round about it. Open or overturn a
wealthy hive: if you take care to drive the sentries from the
entrance with a whiff of tobacco smoke, it will be extremely
[207]
NEWS OF SPRING
rare for the other bees to contend with you for the liquid booty-
conquered from the smiles, from all the charms of the fair
azure months. Try the experiment: I promise you impunity,
if you touch only the heavier hives. You can turn them over
and empty them like so many quivering, but harmless jars.
What does it mean? Have the fierce amazons lost courage?
Has abundance unmanned them; and have they, after the
manner of the too-fortunate inhabitants of luxurious towns,
delegated the dangerous duties to the wretched mercenaries
that keep watch at the gates? No, it has never been observed
that the greatest good-fortune relaxes the valour of the bee.
On the contrary, the more the republic prospers, the more
harshly and severely are its laws applied; and the worker in
a hive where superfluity accumulates labours much more
zealously than her sister in an indigent hive. There are other
reasons which we cannot wholly fathom, but which are likely
reasons, if only we take into account the wild interpretation
which the poor bee must needs place upon our monstrous
doings. Seeing suddenly her huge dwelling-place upheaved,
overturned, half-opened, she probably imagines that an in-
evitable, a natural catastrophe is occurring against which it
were madness to struggle. She no longer resists, but neither
[208]
THE WRATH OF THE BEE
does she flee. It looks as though, accepting the devastation,
already, in her instinct, she saw the future dwelling which she
hopes to build with the materials taken from the gutted town.
She leaves the present defenceless in order to save the here-
after. Or else, perhaps, does she, like the dog in the fable, "the
dog that carried its master's dinner round its neck," knowing
that all is irreparably lost, prefer to die taking her share of
the pillage and to pass from life to death in one prodigious
orgy? We do not know for certain. How should we pene-
trate the motives of the bee, when those of the simplest actions
of our brothers are beyond our ken?
Still, the fact is that, at each great proof to which the
city is put, at each trouble that appears to the bees to possess
an inevitable character, no sooner has the infatuation spread
from one to the other among the dense and quivering crowd
than the bees fling themselves upon the combs, violently tear
the sacred lids from the winter provisions, topple head fore-
most and plunge their whole bodies into the sweet-smelling
vats, imbibe with long draughts the chaste wine of the flowers,
gorge themselves with it, intoxicate themselves with it, till
[209]
NEWS OF SPRING
their bronze-ringed bellies stretch and swell like strangled
leather bottles. Now the bee, when bursting with honey, can
no longer curve her abdomen at the requisite angle to unsheathe
her sting. She becomes, so to speak, mechanically harmless
from that moment. It is generally imagined that the bee-
keeper employs the fumigator to stupefy, to half-asphyxiate
the warriors that gather their treasure in the blue and thus,
under favour of a defenceless slumber, to effect an entrance into
the palace of the innumerous sleeping amazons. This is a mis-
take: the smoke serves first to drive back the guardians of the
threshold, who are ever on the alert and extremely combative;
then, two or three whiffs come to spread panic among the work-
ers: the panic provokes the mysterious orgy and the orgy help-
lessness. Thus is the fact explained that, with bare arms and
unprotected face, one can open the most populous hives, ex-
amine their combs, shake off the bees, spread them at one's
feet, heap them up, pour them out like grains of corn and
quietly collect the honey, in the midst of the deafening cloud
of evicted workers, without incurring a single sting.
5
But woe to whoso touches the poor hives! Keep away
[210]
THE WRATH OF THE BEE
from the abodes of want! Here, smoke has lost its spell; and
you shall scarce have emitted the first whiffs before twenty
thousand vicious and frenzied demons will dart from within
the walls, overwhelm your hands, blind your eyes and blacken
your face. No living being, except, they say, the bear and the
Sphinx Atropos, can resist the rage of the mailed legions.
Above all, do not struggle: their fury would seize the neigh-
bouring colonies; and the smell of discharged venom would
incense all the republics around. There is no means of safety
other than instant flight through the bushes. The bee is less
rancorous, less implacable than the wasp and rarely pursues
her enemy. If flight be impossible, absolute immobility alone
might calm her or put her off. She is frightened by and re-
gents any too sudden movement, but at once forgives that which
no longer stirs.
The poor hives live, or rather die, from day to day; and
it is because they have no honey in their cellars that smoke
makes no impression on the bees. They cannot gorge them-
selves like their sisters that belong to more prosperous com-
munities ; the possibilities of a future city are not there to divert
their ardour. Their only thought is to perish on the outraged
threshold, and, lean, shrunk, agile, rabid, they defend it with
[211]
NEWS OF SPRING
unparalleled and desperate heroism. Therefore the cautious
bee-keeper never displaces the indigent hives without making
a preliminary sacrifice to the hungry Furies. His offering is
a honey-comb. They hasten up and then, the smoke assisting,
they distend and intoxicate themselves : behold them reduced to
helplessness like the rich burgesses of the well-filled cells.
6
One could find much more to tell of the wrath of the
bees and of their singular antipathies. These antipathies are
often so strange that they were long attributed — and are still
attributed by the peasantry — to moral causes, to profound and
mystic intuitions. There is the conviction, for instance, that
the vestal vintagers cannot endure the approach of the un-
chaste, above all of the adulterous. It would be surprising if
the most rational beings that live with us on this incomprehen-
sible globe were to attach so much importance to a trespass that
is often very harmless. In reality, they give it no thought; but
they, whose whole life sways to the nuptial and sumptuous
breath of the flowers, abhor the perfumes which we steal from
them.
Are we to believe that chastity exhales fewer odours than
[212]
THE WRATH OF THE BEE
love? Is this the origin of the rancour of the jealous bees and
of the austere legend that avenges virtues as jealous as they?
Be this as it may, the legend must be classed with the many
others that pretend to do great honour to the phenomena of
nature by ascribing human feelings to them. It would be
better, on the contrary, to mix our petty human psychology as
little as possible with all that we do not easily understand, to
seek our explanations only without, on this side of man or on
that side; for it is probably there that lie the decisive revela-
tions which we are still awaiting.
THE END
[213]
}o{c>
QH Maeterlinck, Maurice
81 News of spring and other
10 nature studies
Biological
& Meclic4
PLEASE DO NOT REMOVE
CARDS OR SLIPS FROM THIS POCKET
UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO LIBRARY
,s\\\\\\\\\\\\\>\\\\N\\\\\\\\\\\\\\'*iaii
Live Music Archive
Librivox Free Audio
Metropolitan Museum
Cleveland Museum of Art
Internet Arcade
Console Living Room
Books to Borrow
Open Library
TV News
Understanding 9/11