Everyday Adventures

ove to be a trout-brook. The winding wood-road passed through dim aisles of whispering pine trees. At a steep place, a bent green stem stretched half across the path, and from it swayed a rose

e first time my eyes were opened to see what a lovely thing a flower could be. In the half-light I knelt on the soft pine-needles and studied long the hollow purple-pink shell, veined

ast came upon a whole congregation nodding and swaying in long rows around t

well, there go I. They are strange flowers, these orchids. When first they were made out of sunshine, mist, and dew, every color was granted them save one. They may wear sno

at stung like fire. Again, on the tip-top of Mount Pocono in Pennsylvania, I had just found the long-sought nest of a chestnut-sided warbler. Even as I admired the male bird, with his white cheeks and golden head and chestnut-streaked sides, and the four eggs like flecked pink pearls, my eye caught a sight which brought me to my knees regardless for a moment of n

-black coils of a black timber rattlesnake. I picked my way down the mountain-side, with Beauty in one hand and Death in

e a shimmering pool of changing greens lapping over a white sand-land that had been thrust up from the South into the very heart of the North. I followed a winding wood-path along the hig

out of a mass of hollow, crimson-streaked leaves filled with clear water, swung two glorious blossoms. Wine-red, aquamarine, pearl

vivid crimson-lake leaves of the wild ipecac, with its strange green flowers; while everywhere, as if set in snow, gleamed the green-and-gold of the Hudsonia, the barrens-heather. The plants looked like tiny cedar trees laden down with thickly set blossoms of pure gold, which the wind spilled in little yellow

alla lily. At last the path stretched straight toward the flat-topped mound that showed dim and fair through the low trees. The woods became still. Even the Maryland yellow-throat stopped singing, the prairie

weet that he always after remembered it, and which has since come down to us of to-day as the tune of Robin Adair. Listen as I would, however

At its very edge was another sentry. From under my feet sounded a deep, fierce hiss, and there across the path stretched the great body of a pine snake fully six feet long, all cream-white and umber-brown. Raising its strange pointed head, with its gold and black eyes, it his

he path was lost in a foam of the blue, lilac, and white butterfly blossoms of the lupine. Little clouds of fragrance drifted through the air, as the wind swayed rows and rows of the transparent bells of the leucothoe. Beyond the lupine stood a

him high, they ha

ght him over

d him by the m

s the gate

beneath and

e held that th

grazed benea

re the Quee

e those of True Thomas, I too might have see

no cathedral of mighty green arches roofed by a shimmering June sky; there were no aisles of softly singing trees; and there were no rows of sweet faces looking up at me and waiting for my coming; only heaps of sawdust and hideous masses of lopped branches showed where a steam sawmill had cut its deadly way. Underneath the fallen dying boughs which had once waved above the world, companioned only

oad over the hills all sweet with the scent of wild-grape and the drugged perfume of chestnut tassels. At last I would reach a barway sunken in masses of sweet-fern and shaded by thickets of alder and witch-hazel. There a long-forgotten wood-road led to my Land of Heart's Desire. Parting the branches, I would step into the hush of th

in?, the loveliest of all our orchids. Two narrow, white, beautiful curved petals stretched out at right angles, while above them towered a white sepal, the three together making a snowy cross. Below this cross hung the lip of the flower, a milk-white hollow shell fully an inch across and an inch deep, veined with crystalline pink which d

ADY SLIPPERS (Cy

ems. They were beautifully curved at the margin, and were of a brilliant green, a little lighter on the under side than on the upper, and, at first sight, much like

one with my compliments and the assurance that the flower belonged to him because it was found on his land. I accompanied these gifts with various misleading messages as to where they grew. He would hunt and hunt, but fin

rough every spot on this farm except this one, looking for this flower.

t that she has been transplanted to some secret spot known to my unscrupulous b

marsh I was warned was a dangerous one. Cattle and men, too, in times past have perished in its depths. For eight unexplored miles it stretched away in f

ties. Panthers, wolves, ogres-anything might belong to such a pile of bones as that. I knew, however, that the last New Jersey wolf was killed a century or so ago. The burrow was und

n, a color not found in any other plant. Then there was the rattlesnake fern, a lover of deep and dank woods, with its golden-yellow seed-cluster, or 'rattle,' growing from the centre of its fringed leaves. The oddest of all the ferns was the maidenhair spleen-wort, whose tiny lea

almost given up hope, I came upon a clump of the regal flowers growing, not in the swamp itself, but on a shaded bank sloping down from the encircling woods. Three of the plants had two flowers each, the rest only one. Among these was a single blossom, pure white without a trace of pink or purple. Although it was only the thirtieth of June, several of the flowers were already sli

as often as he could get it, he would give terrible war-whoops and tell how many palefaces his ancestors had scalped. He would usually end by threatening to do some free-hand s

at had been done, he swore mightily that he would leave said insignia there until he could wash them out with the heart's blood of the gifted artist. They still show faintly on the door, although Jim has slept for many a year in the little Indian cemetery on the mountain, b

ns and rattlesnake oil, in the days when the rattlesnake shared with the skunk the honor of providing an unwilling cure for rheumatism. Our path led up through masses of color. There was the pale pure pink of the crane's

I saw for the first time the Wilson's black-cap, with its bright yellow breast and tiny black crown, and the rare Cape May warbler, with its black-streaked yellow underparts and orange-red cheeks. The richly dressed and sombre black-throated blue and bay-breasted wer

about a man from Bridgeport, name not given, who caught a rattlesnake while on a hunt with Jim, but

the writer and the O

oudly; "Tin and I

ventured

-bites," respo

e Ornithologist, hoping to learn

It took two matches and he yelled somethin' terrible. I told him we were savin' his life, but the fool said he would rather

nobtrusively to the rear, while the dauntless Pan led the van with a crotched stick. Suddenly Jim thrust one foot up into the air like a toe-dancer, and pirouetted with amazing rapidity on the other. He had been in the very act of stepping over a small huckleberry-bush, when he noted under its lee a rattle

panted Jim, bearing down with all h

aus

ed; while Tin, who had hurried up with

indignantly, "but I don't wan

u're company. Tin can pick

t my friend?" I

watching the scene from the far

snake," he said earnestly, "

-face falter. Remembering Deerslayer at the stake, Daniel Boone, and sundry other brave white men without a cross, I set my teeth, gripped the rough, cold, scaly body just back of the crotched stick, and lifted. The great snake's black, fixed, devilish eyes looked into mine. If, in this world, there are peep-holes into he

hake so?" queried Jim,

rheumatism,"

movable fangs which are always folded back until ready for use. They were hollow and of a glistening white. Halfway down on the side of each w

nd away quick after you d

plied; "no man will ever get his h

FOREST-THE BAN

d from the neighborhood of that snake. This was my first introduction to the King of the Dark Places, t

ike of purple-pink and white butterfly blossoms. This is the first of the orchids to appear, and no more exquisite or beautiful flower could head the procession which stretches from May until September. I

these leaves are still thought by many to be a sure cure for the bite of a rattlesnake. Personally, I would rather rely on a sharp knife and permanganate of potash. In the same group as the rattlesnake plantain are several varieties of lady's tresses, which grow in every damp meadow in midsu

f the family are full of interest. In fact, the second rarest orchid of our American list-the celebrated crane-fly orchid (Tipularia unifolia)-has a series of insignificant greenish-purple blossoms which look as much like mosquitoes or flies as anything else, and can be detected only with the greatest difficulty. Yet I am planning to take a journey of several hundred miles

r. There is the beautiful golden whip-poor-will's shoe, in two sizes (Cypripedium hirsutum, and Cypripedium parviflorum), and those lovely ny

hundred times before. Suddenly, as I came to the slope of the upper pasture, growing in the wet bank of the deep-cut trail, my eye caught sight of a little flower of the purest rose-pink, the color of the peach-blossom, with a deeply fringed drooping lip, the whole flower springing from a slender stem with oval, grass-like leaves. To me it ha

d on a long swaying stem. It was no other than the beautiful grass-pink (Limodorum tuberosum), which blooms in July, while the pogonia comes out in late June. The grass-pink has from two to

ear all these colors. He who has never seen either the large or the small purple fringed orchid growing in the June or Jul

e water freezes in the hollow leaves of the pitcher-plant, to the last gleam of the orange polygala in the late fall, we are always finding something rare and new. On that August day we followed a dim path that led through thickets of scrub-oak and sweet pepper-bush. By its side grew clumps of deer-grass, with its purple-pink petals

e leaf covered with tiny red hairs and speckled thick with glittering drops of dew; while here and there little insects, which had alighted on the sweet, fatal drops, were enmeshed in the entanglin

ite with gleaming, fragrant water-lilies. In a marsh by the ditch grew clumps of cotton-grass or pussytoes, each stem of which

glottis." In front of him, on a green stem, was clustered a mass of little flowers of incomparable whiteness, with fringed lips and long spikes. One petal bent like a canopy over the brown stamens, while the other two flared out on either side, like the wings of tiny white b

r this wary bird. A Henslow sparrow sang his abrupt and, to us, almost unknown song. The Botanist neither saw nor heard. All th

LUE HERON A