Orchids

     A few years ago, our youngest daughter brought us a big orchid plant with several stems with lots of gorgeous flowers.  How overwhelming, I had never had such a plant in all my life, even though I did have orchids for my bride’s bouquet.  Orchids are one of my favorites and this daughter has for her second name Orchid so she is fond of them also.  We enjoyed this plant for a long time but it finally gave up.

 

 

 

 

 

          

     So yesterday, this daughter and her sister came and brought us an orchid plant with all the lovely lavender orchid flowers. 

 

 

 

          

 

 

 

 

 

     There is nothing more perfect and heavenly than a flower fresh from God hands.  I can hardly wait to see them in heaven where they will never die.

 

 










Orchids  From Our Son




 




 "If seeds of the garden cress are placed on the face of a wall of clay which is kept moist, the rootlets, after bursting out of the seeds, grow at first downwards, but later they enter the wall in a lateral direction." "The direction taken by roots in their search for food is dependent upon the presence of that food, and the fact that the roots grow towards places that afford supplies of nutritious material, are strikingly exhibited, also, by epiphytes growing on the bark of trees, such as tropical orchids. . . . The growing rootlets which spring from the seed, and the absorptive cells produced from minute tubercles, grow upwards if placed on the under surface of a branch, horizontally if placed on the side, and downwards if on the upper surface. Thus, whatever the direction, they grow towards the moist bark which affords them nourishment." 




October 20, 1898 EJW, PTUK 661 





 




 Bower Birds



"Our Feathered Friends. 


Sense of Beauty in Birds" 


 

"The more we study the works of God, the more we become convinced that He has made nothing without a purpose. "He hath made everything beautiful in its time" (Eccl. 3:11), and it is evident that all beauty is not solely for man's pleasure, but that birds, at least, have as keen an eye for beauty as man has. The nearer we come to God, and the better acquainted we become with Him, the more we realize the fact that, as the offspring of God, we have kinship with all creation. Then we shall no longer look upon the creatures less highly endowed than we, as formed to be servants to man, or to be served up in, in dainty dishes to tickle his palate, but as companions, and even as teachers. See Job 12:2-10.   

God has given them the same sensibilities and the same emotions that He has to us, only in smaller degree, and, considering their limitations, they often reveal His working in a more marked manner than men do. Among the creatures that rival human beings in the love of adornment, are the Bower Birds of Australia, so called because their nests are veritable arbours, as seen in the out on this page. The following description is from Chambers's Journal:-   

At the courting season, beautiful and curious objects are collected together in these bowers, which are often elaborate structures, and built upon the ground, the nests being in trees. The whole account reads somewhat like a description of the crockery, bead, and tinsel houses which rustic children spread out for themselves on a dry grassy knoll on a pleasant summer day.   

One of these Bower Birds takes most readily to the arranging and re-arranging of brightly coloured feathers, bleached bones, and shells. Another likes to carry round atones, even from a great distance, and assort them with shells. A third species makes use of blackberries, fresh leaves, and pink buds.  

At the courting season the males dance through their glittering halls, exhibiting the most grotesque antics. In an aviary in New South Wales the male would sometimes chase the female, picking up a gay feather or large leaf, and uttering a low whistling note.  

The Great Bower Bird has been seen amusing itself flying backwards and forwards, taking a shell alternately from each side, and carrying it through the archway in its bill. The bower of the fawn-breasted species is raised on a platform of sticks, and is nearly four feet in length. The quantity of gay objects in all cases surprises the observer.  

Since the habits of the Australian Bower Birds have been narrated, Dr. Beccari, an Italian traveler, has described a new one, which he found in New Guinea, called the Gardener Bower Bird. This bird chooses a flat surface beside a small tree, round the trunk of which it builds a conical hut nearly three feet in diameter at the base. The hut is formed of the twigs of a parasitical hanging orchid, whose leaves, keeping fresh for a long time, add to the beauty of the bower.  

Within the hut, a quantity of moss is arranged round the trunk of the tree. There is a meadow of moss, weeded of grass and stones, and kept scrupulously clean, before the cottage door. Gay flowers, glossy fruit, fungi as well as bright insects, captured and killed, are placed on this green turf so as to form a pretty garden. Hence the bird's name of 'gardener,' which is also its native name. When the objects fade, they are removed out of sight, and fresh ones supplied.”




 

June 13, 1901 EJW, PTUK 380



 


 "THE appointment of Governor Griggs, of New Jersey, to the office of attorney-general of the United States, is to be celebrated February 18 by prominent men of New Jersey, at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel in New York, with a dinner costing $100 a plate. No one can rightly dispute that those who have money are at liberty to spend it as they choose. At the same time no one can truthfully dispute the fact that there are thousands upon thousands of people who will draw invidious comparisons between a dinner costing $100 a plate and the reduction of from ten to twenty-five per cent. in their own wages, which are already so low that they can scarcely live.  

The New York World justly comments on the situation as follows:—  

There are many who will speculate upon what could be done with this $3,00 to be expended upon a single dinner.  

The cotton-mill workers in New Bedford, for instance, will be interested in this banquet. The oldest worker, who is able to make $6 a week by the hardest kind of labor, may find food for comment in the fact that powerful political rulers will each eat and drink $100 worth in a few hours. The old cotton-spinner would have to work 1,000 hours to earn that sum.  

And those all over the country who are out of employment will think about this dinner, and speculate upon how much could be done with the money expended on it. there are sufferers in this city, like the garment-makers, whose condition would be bettered by it. They will have difficulty in realizing that a single individual can consume $100 worth of food and drink at a single meal. That would keep many a family in victuals for months.  

But the feast will no doubt take place without thought of this suffering. The thirty will sit at a table adorned with beautiful flowers,—violets, orchids, and roses. There will be rare old vintage wines with every course. The rarest delicacies that can be found the country ever will be placed before the hosts and their guest.     

And the Scripture portrays the situation exactly when it says of the "rich men" of "the last days:" "Behold, the hire of the laborers who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth. . . . Ye have lived in pleasure on the earth, and been wanton: ye have nourished your hearts, as in a day of slaughter." James 5:1-5. 




February 8, 1898 ATJ, ARSH 93