Riverby

nless one makes a dead set at it, like an herbalist. One likes to have his floral acquaintances come to him easily and naturally, like his other friends. Some pl

ookout for on his walks. I have never yet found the orchid called calypso, a large, variegated purple and yellow flower, Gray says, which grows in cold, wet woods and bogs,-very beautiful and very rare. Calypso, you know, was the nymph who fell in love with Ulysses and detained him seve

ower, somewhat like a lady's-slipper, that is, with an inflated sac-shaped lip; the petals and sepals much alike, rising and spreading; the color mingled purple and yellow; the stem, or scape, from three to five inches high,

It is a pretty and decorative sort of plant, with, when perfect, two stages or platforms of leaves, one above the other. You see a whorl of five or six leaves, a foot or more from the ground, which seems to bear a standard with another whorl of three leaves at the top of it. The small, colorless, recurved flowers shoot out from above this top whorl. The whole expression of the plant

he god of the river, Alpheus, who became desperately in love with her on seeing her at her bath. Our Arethusa is one of the prettiest of the orchids, and has been pursued through many a marsh and quaking bog by her lovers. She is a bright pink-purple flower an inch o

e. A new railroad cut across my tramping-ground, with its hordes of Italian laborers and its mountains of

bably the seeds had lain dormant in cracks and crevices for years, and when the catastrophe came, and they found themselves in new soil amid the wreck of the old order of things, they sprang into new life, and grew as if the world had been created anew for them, as in a sense it had. Certainly, they grew most luxuriantly, and never was the ruin wrought by powder veiled by more delicate, lace-like foliage.[5:1] The panicles of drooping, pale flesh-colored flowers heightened the effect of the whole. This plant is a regular climber; it has no extra appendages for that purpose, and does not wind, but climbs by me

ality the next season, and has never appeared since. Perha

ed "Dutchman's breeches") the last week in April. It is a rock-loving plant, and springs upon the shelves of the ledges, or in the débris at their base, as if by magic. As soon as blood-root has begun to star the waste, stony places, and the first swallow has been h

eed. Report had come to me, through my botanizing neighbor, that in a certain quaking sphagnum bog in the woods the showy lady's-slipper could be found. The locality proved to be the marrowy grave of an extinct lake or black tarn. On the borders of it the white azalea was in bloom, fast fading. In the midst of it were spruces and black ash and giant ferns, and, low in the spongy, mossy bottom, the pitcher plant. The lady's-slipper grew in little groups and companies all about. Never have I beheld a prettier sight,-so gay, so festive, so holiday-looking. Were they so many gay bonnets rising above the foliage? or were they flocks of whi

the secret guard it closely, lest their favorite be exterminated. A well-known botanist in one of the large New England cities told me that it was

y by rail to see this flower. I conducted him to the edge of the swamp,

peering far into

feet of you,

e there almost within reach, the first he had ever seen, and his appreciation of the scene, visible in every look and gesture, was greatly satisfying. In the fall he c

ill comes to feast his eyes upo

regard it. It was suspended from the end of a small, curving sapling; was flecked here and there by some whitish substance, so as to blend it with the gray mottled boles of the trees; and, in the dimly lighted ground-floor of th

range-color. The leaves were deeply notched and toothed, very bristly, and were pressed flat to the ground. The whole plant was a veritable Esau for hairs, and it seemed to lay hold upon the ground as if it was not going to let go easily. And what a fiery plume it had! The next day, in another field a mile away, I chanced upon more of the flowers. On making inquiry, I found that a small patch or colony of the plants had appeared that season, or first been noticed then, in a meadow well known to me from bo

f it were appearing here and there in the fields, and the farmers were thoroughly alive to the danger, and were fighting it like fire. Its seeds are winged like those of the dandelion, and it sows itself far and near. It w

hat the plant is Hieracium aurantiacum from Europe, a kind of hawkweed

to make it out. It seemed like some sort of scarlet evening primrose. The parts were in fours, the petals slightly heart-shaped and convoluted in the bud, the leaves bristly, the calyx-tube prolonged, etc.; but the stem was square, the leaves opposite, and the tube urn-shaped. The flowers were an inch across, and bright purp

ought the wild rose on the Massachusetts coast deeper tinted and more fragrant than those I was used

so much something colored as it is color itself. And then the moist, cool, shady places it affects, usually where it has no floral rivals, and where the large, dark shadows need just such a dab of fire! Often, too, we see it double, its reflected image in some dark pool heightening its effect. I have never found it with its only rival in color, the monard

are sprinkled with the great marsh-mallow. It is a most pleasing spectacle,-level stretches of dark green flag or waving marsh-grass kindled on every square yard by these bright pink blossoms, like great burning coals fanned in

der to the broad spaces dotted with the mallow. It, too, came to us from over seas, and first appeared along the Wallkill, many years ago. It used to be thought by the farmers in that vicinity that its seed was first brought in wool imported to this country from Australia, and washed in the Wallkill at Walden, where there was a woolen factory. This is not prob

of color is the marsh milkweed, far less brilliant than the loosestrife or the mallow, still

face of a great lichen-covered wall of rock, where no soil or mould was visible,-a jet of foliage and color shooting out of a black line on the face of a perpendicular mountain wall and rising up like a tiny fountain, its drops turning to flame-colored jewels that hung and danced in th

me, they come the latter part of April. The grass is greening here and there on the moist slopes and by the spring runs; the first furrow has been struck by the farmer; the liver-leaf is in the height of its beauty, and the bright constellations of the blood-root shine out here and there; one has had his first taste and his second taste of the spring and of the woods, and his tongue is sharpened rather than cloyed. Now he will ta

f the un

for troops of boys and girls going to the woods to gather it! and let them look out that in their greed they do not exterminate it. Within reach of our large towns, the choicer spring wild flowers are hunted mercilessly. Every fresh party from town raids them as if bent upon their destruction. One day, about ten miles from one of our Hudson River cities, there got into the train six young women loaded down with vast sheaves and bundles of trailing arbutus. Each one of them had enou

nd suns itself; and so on through its adventurous course till the hills are cleared and the river is in sight. Our road leads us along this stream, across its rude bridges, through dark hemlock and pine woods, under gray, rocky walls, now past a black pool, then within sight or hearing of a foaming rapid or fall, till we strike the outlet of the long level that leads to the lake. In this we launch our boat and paddle slowly upward over its dark surface, now pushing our way through half-submerged treetops, then ducking under the trunk of an overturned tree which bridges the stream and makes a convenient way for the squirrels and wood-mice, or else forcing the boat over it when it is sunk a few inches below the surface. We are traversing what was once a continuation of the lake; the forest floor is as level as the water and but a few inches above it, even in summer; it sweeps back a half mile or more, densely covered with black ash, red maple, and other deciduous trees, to the foot of the rocky hills which shut us in. What glimpses we get, as we steal along, into the heart of the rank, dense, silent woods! I carry in my eye yet the vision I had, on one occasion, of a solitary meadow lily hanging like a fairy bell there at the end of a chance opening, where a ray of sunlight fell full upon it, and brought out its brilliant orange against the dark green background. It appeared to be the only bit of bright color in all the woods. Then the song of a single hermit thrush immediately after did even more for the ear than the lily did for the eye. Presently the swamp sparrow, one of the rarest of the sparrows, was seen and h

r individual beauty and charm; others, more coarse and common, delight us by mass and p

and saw I

heads in spr

ing a little watercourse through a greening meadow with a broad line of new gold. One glances up from his walk, and his

dy roadside with their bright, beaming faces. The evening primrose is a coarse, rankly growing plant; but, in

y are very capricious as to perfume. The only species which are uniformly fragrant are the tall Canada violet, so common in our northern woods,-white, with a tinge of purple to the under side of its petals,-and the small white violet of the marshy places; yet one summer I came upon a host of the spurred violet in a sunny place in the woods which filled the air with a delicate perfume. A handful of them yielded a perceptible fragrance, but a single flower none that I could detect. The Canada violet very frequently blooms in the fall, and is more fragrant at such times than in its earlier blooming. I must not forget to mention that delicate and lovely flower of May, the fringed polygala. You gather it when you go for the fragrant, s