Blossoms all set swinging On each slender stem. Touch-me-nots are happy When he visits them, For he shakes the pollen From his shining crest. Rubythroat is joyous, Touch-me-not is blest! PELARGONIUM STORIES. THE PELARGONIUMS. [Illustration: [Pelargonium]] A pelargonium is a “stork’s bill.” “Pelargonium” comes from a Greek word meaning “stork,” and the plant is so named because of the long, beaklike seed-pods. We call the pelargoniums “geraniums,” and raise them in our houses. “Geranium” means almost the same as “pelargonium,” for a geranium is a “crane’s bill,” “geranium” coming from a Greek word meaning “crane,” and the plant is so called because of the shape of the seed-pods. I do not think there is much difference between a crane’s bill and a stork’s bill, and these two plants with their seed-pods so very much alike were, no doubt, named “stork’s bill” and “crane’s bill” to distinguish them from each other. But we have succeeded in hopelessly mixing them up, for everybody insists upon calling the pelargonium “geranium,” and the geraniums which grow wild in our woods and fields we call “crane’s bill” and “herb Robert.” The pelargoniums are mostly Africans. There are a great many kinds of them, and all but ten or twelve live in South Africa among the Bushmen, the Boers, and the Englishmen. The rest have chosen to settle in the northern part of Africa, in the Orient, if you know where that is, and in Australia. Some people believe there are four hundred different pelargoniums, and some say there are less than two hundred. You see, the pelargoniums change easily. Thus a great many varieties are always arising, and it is almost impossible at this late day to discover which was the original form of the plant. The pelargoniums we know best are the ones we call “horseshoe geraniums,” “Lady Washington geraniums,” and “rose geraniums.” We are apt to think of the whole Pelargonium Family as being ornamental rather than useful, but in that wonderful South African country where so many of them live, there is actually a pelargonium that produces edible tubers! The next time you go to Cape Colony you must be sure and eat potatoes gathered from a geranium plant! Down in Algeria, where the walls are so white and the sun shines so hot, the people express an oil from their geraniums and sell it. Other geraniums also yield this fragrant oil, but nowhere is it so largely used as in sunny Algeria. Pelargoniums love to grow. You need only break off a twig and stick it in the ground, and it will grow as merrily as though nothing had happened. One day a double-flowered crimson pelargonium blew away in a gale of wind. It broke off just above the root and away it went. It was rescued, stuck back into the pot of earth, abundantly watered, and continued to open its flowers as though such an escapade were an everyday occurrence!