thiy 
 June 
 
 March 7, 1900 
 
 Number 141 
 PS 1927 "^ 
 
 1900 
 Copy 1 
 
 
 
 THREE 
 OUTDOOR PAPERS 
 
 BY 
 
 T. W. HIGGINSON 
 
 WITH A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 
 
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tEtlje ISiiJcrstoe literature ^ttiti 
 
 THREE OUTDOOR PAPERS 
 
 BY 
 
 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 WITH A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 
 
 AND AN INDEX OF PLANTS AND ANIMALS 
 MENTIONED 
 
 HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 
 
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 Chicago : 378-388 Wabash Avenue 
 
LJDrary of eftfiffi^efu 
 «>f«eeortM 
 
 APR 1 4 1900 
 
 Keg!8t«r of Copyffffifn 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 FAQE 
 
 iii 
 
 Biographical Sketch 
 
 I. The Procession of the Flowers . . 1 
 
 II. April Days 31 
 
 III. Water-Lilies 65 
 
 Index of Plants and Animals mentioned . . 97 
 
 57963 
 
 Copyright, 1889, 
 By lee and SHEPARD. 
 
 Copyright, 1897, 
 By LONGMANS, GREEN & CO. 
 
 Copyright, 1900, 
 By HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. 
 
 SECOND COPY. 
 
 \ ^ 0. 
 
 The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A. 
 fileotrotyped and Printed by H. 0. Houghton & Company. 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 
 
 MR. STEPHEN HIGGINSON, JR., a 
 Boston merchant, himself the son of 
 another Boston merchant, who served in the 
 Continental Congress, and descended from 
 one of the earliest founders of the colony of 
 Massachusetts Bay, was appointed, after he 
 had passed middle life, to the stewardship 
 of Harvard College. This office, now known 
 as that of the bursar, required him to live in 
 Cambridge, and represent the treasurer of the 
 college in immediate connection with the stu- 
 dent body. Accordingly he removed with his 
 large family to Cambridge, and there was 
 born, December 22, 1823, the youngest of his 
 fifteen children, Thomas Wentworth Higgin- 
 son. 
 
 In his delightful volume of personal remi- 
 niscences, CJicerfzd Yesterdays, Mr. Higgin- 
 son has given a narrative of his youth and 
 training in the college community, then a 
 quiet, isolated country society ; for Cambridge 
 was separated from Boston by a wide river, 
 and broad stretches of marshland on its banks 
 increased the separation. A leisurely omni- 
 iii 
 
Biographical Sketch 
 
 bus once an hour picked up the few passen- 
 gers who wished or needed to go to town, but 
 for the most part Cambridge was a contented 
 village, having its rustic life blended with the 
 cultivated, serene life of the academic circle ; 
 and the boys and girls who grew up together 
 in the neighborhood found their pleasure half 
 in books, half in that familiar intercourse with 
 nature which is invited when the country 
 beckons at the end of the village street. 
 
 The effect of this training is well seen in 
 the character of Mr. Higginson's writing. 
 The tastes formed in youth have been culti- 
 vated throughout his life, under all sorts of 
 conditions, and the three papers which are 
 gathered in this collection show that intimate 
 acquaintance with the country on the edge 
 of which he lived, and into which he made 
 endless incursions, whether from Cambridge 
 or Newburyport or Worcester or Newport. 
 The index at the close gives the names of 
 plants and animals mentioned. It would not 
 be an idle exercise for one to make a similar 
 index of authors casually referred to ; and as 
 one read over the names of Horace, Euri- 
 pides, Homer, Virgil, among the ancients, 
 Chaucer, Marvell, Sir Thomas Browne, Izaak 
 Walton, among the early English worthies, 
 Humboldt and Gray and Harris, among the 
 iv 
 
Biographical Sketch 
 
 men of science, Scott, Emerson, Thoreau, 
 Longfellow, Whittier, Wordsworth, Fred- 
 rika Bremer, Hawthorne, Goethe, Tennyson, 
 Holmes, Susan Fenimore Cooper, among those 
 fairly contemporary with the author himself, 
 one might fancy for a moment that this was 
 a bookish study of nature, but on looking 
 closer would see how literature was the other 
 lung with which this writer breathed, and that 
 nature at first hand and nature as seen in 
 poets and men of science so blended in his 
 observation and reflection as to make but one 
 image to the soul. 
 
 In his college life he was the youngest in 
 his class but the second in rank, and he en- 
 tered the active life of the world well equipped 
 as to scholarship and with a mind quick to 
 appropriate the new ideas which came hurry- 
 ing into the ports of Boston and Cambridge 
 on every breeze. It was the day when enthu- 
 siastic folk thought the world was to be swept 
 fresh and clean with all the new brooms of 
 reform ; and the staid, decorous community, 
 which knew little of the extremes that marked 
 society in other parts of the world, was set 
 upon by the advance agents of communism, 
 total abstinence, abolitionism, and religious in- 
 dividualism, and bidden throw away its idols 
 and worship at the only true shrine. Mr. 
 
Biographical Sketch 
 
 Higginson had already made himself some- 
 thing more than an amateur naturalist ; he 
 now taught school a little, but presently found 
 himself very easily in the Divinity School of 
 his college, making ready to be a minister, 
 and during the few years of his pulpit service, 
 becoming more and more absorbed in the one 
 commanding moral revolution which was for 
 upheaving American society. 
 
 He has himself told how he took part in 
 the agitation for abolition, and was for ex- 
 changing his pastoral crook for a musket when 
 it almost looked as if the first battle between 
 the two forces was to be fought in Boston 
 streets ; he had a share also in the colonizing 
 movement which led to the actual preliminary 
 fight in Kansas, and when the war for the 
 Union finally did break out, he stepped down 
 from the pulpit, laid aside his scholar's gown, 
 and put on the habit of a soldier. From that 
 day he ceased to be the Rev. Mr. Higginson, 
 — a name well known by this time in anti- 
 slavery circles, — and shortly became Colonel 
 Higginson, a title which he has ever since 
 retained. He led a regiment of blacks in 
 South Carolina, and he has told the story of 
 those historic days in his book, Army Life 
 in a Black Regiment. 
 
 Meanwhile, lecturing had made him a 
 vi 
 
Biographical Sketch 
 
 preacher between Sundays, and his love of 
 literature and of nature had led him down 
 some new lanes on his way to the goals to- 
 ward which Reform pointed. He was im- 
 pressed, as so many were, by the disabilities 
 of women, and he wrote that effective paper, 
 whose title was itself an argument, ''Ought 
 Women to learn the Alphabet ? " He knew 
 what nature did for the healthy man, and he 
 wrote another paper, entitled " Saints and 
 their Bodies," and these two papers headed a 
 long succession of articles relating to educa- 
 tion, the widening of the woman's world, and 
 the better understanding of the beautiful 
 world in which we live. A long residence at 
 Newport in Rhode Island led to a series of 
 delightful sketches to which he gave the name 
 of Oldport Days, and to a romance entitled 
 Malbone. He gathered his papers into vol- 
 umes from time to time, and added also a 
 volume of poems. 
 
 It is not surprising that one who had taken 
 so strong an interest in American public life, 
 and was so active in educational matters, 
 should seek to break down the formal, unin- 
 teresting study of American history by writ- 
 ing a book which should show young people 
 how alive history was, and his Young Folks 
 History of the United States was a pioneer 
 vii 
 
Biographical Sketch 
 
 in the field of fresh, readable school-books. 
 This animated survey of national growth has 
 enjoyed great popularity from its first publi- 
 cation, and many who caught their first love 
 of history from the book were grown men 
 when they read his Larger History of the 
 United States of America to the Close of Pre- 
 sident Jackson's A dniinistration. 
 
 Colonel Higginson has taken an active part 
 in public life. He has been a member of the 
 Massachusetts State Board of Education, and 
 a representative to the General Court of the 
 same State, and no great discussion of national 
 policy has failed to call out contributions from 
 him either on the platform or through the 
 press. About twenty years ago he returned 
 to the city of his birth, and has since made 
 his home there. One of the latest of his 
 books, Old Cambridge, is a graceful sketch 
 of the literary associations of that university 
 town. His remembrances gave special force 
 to his characterizations, but had any one else 
 written the book. Colonel Higginson himself 
 would have been a prominent figure in the 
 group described. 
 
 H. E. S. 
 
 vm 
 
THE PROCESSION OF THE 
 FLOWERS 
 
I 
 
 THE PROCESSION OF THE 
 FLOWERS 
 
 IN Cuba there is a blossoming shrub whose 
 multitudinous crimson flowers are so se- 
 ductive to the humming-birds that they hover 
 all day around it, buried in its blossoms until 
 petal and wing seem one. At first upright, 
 the gorgeous bells droop downward, and fall 
 unwithered to the ground, and are thence 
 called by the Creoles " Cupid's Tears." Fred- 
 rika Bremer relates that daily she brought 
 home handfuls of these blossoms to her 
 chamber, and nightly they all disappeared. 
 One morning she looked toward the wall of 
 the apartment, and there, in a long crimson 
 line, the delicate flowers went ascending one 
 by one to the ceiling, and passed from sight. 
 She found that each was borne laboriously 
 onward by a little colorless ant much smaller 
 than itself: the bearer was invisible, but the 
 lovely burdens festooned the wall with beauty. 
 3 
 
The Procession of the Flowers 
 
 To a watcher from the sky, the march of 
 the flowers of any zone across the year would 
 seem as beautiful as that West-Indian pa- 
 geant. These frail creatures, rooted where 
 they stand, a part of the *' still life " of Nature, 
 yet share her ceaseless motion. In the most 
 sultry silence of summer noons, the vital cur- 
 rent is coursing with desperate speed through 
 the innumerable veins of every leaflet, and 
 the apparent stillness, like the sleeping of a 
 child's top, is in truth the very ecstasy of 
 perfected motion. 
 
 Not in the tropics only, but even in Eng- 
 land, whence most of our floral associations 
 and traditions come, the march of the flowers 
 is in an endless circle, and, unlike our expe- 
 rience, something is always in bloom. In the 
 Northern United States, it is said, the active 
 growth of most plants is condensed into ten 
 weeks, while in the mother country the full 
 activity is maintained through sixteen. But 
 even the English winter does not seem to be 
 a winter, in the same sense as ours, appear- 
 ing more like a chilly and comfortless au- 
 tumn. There is no month in the English 
 year when some special plant does not 
 bloom : the Colt's-foot there opens its fra- 
 grant flowers from December to February; 
 4 
 
The Procession of the Flowers 
 
 the yellow-flowered Hellebore, and its cousin, 
 the sacred Christmas Rose of Glastonbury, 
 extend from January to March; and the 
 Snowdrop and Primrose often come before 
 the first of February. Something may be 
 gained, much lost, by that perennial succes- 
 sion ; those links, however slight, must make 
 the floral period continuous to the imagina- 
 tion ; while our year gives a pause and an 
 interval to its children, and after exhausted 
 October has effloresced into Witch-Hazel, 
 there is an absolute reserve of blossom until 
 the Alders wave again. 
 
 No symbol could so well represent Nature's 
 first yielding in spring-time as this blossom- 
 ing of the Alder, the drooping of the tresses 
 of these tender things. Before the frost is 
 gone, and while the new-born season is yet 
 too weak to assert itself by actually uplifting 
 anything, it can at least let fall these blos- 
 soms, one by one, till they wave defiance to 
 the winter on a thousand boughs. How pa- 
 tiently they have waited ! Men are perplexed 
 with anxieties about their own immortality; 
 but these catkins, which hang, almost full- 
 formed, above the ice all winter, show no 
 such solicitude, though when March wooes 
 them they are ready. Once relaxing, their 
 5 
 
The Procession of the Flowers 
 
 pollen is so prompt to fall that it sprinkles 
 your hand as you gather them ; then, for one 
 day, they are the perfection of grace upon 
 your table, and next day they are weary and 
 emaciated, and their little contribution to the 
 spring is done. 
 
 Then many eyes watch for the opening of 
 the May-flower, day by day, and a few for 
 the Hepatica. So marked and fantastic are 
 the local preferences of all our plants, that, 
 with miles of woods and meadows open to 
 their choice, each selects only some few 
 spots for its accustomed abodes, and some 
 one among them all for its very earliest blos- 
 soming. There is often a single chosen nook, 
 which you might almost cover with your 
 handkerchief, where each flower seems to 
 bloom earliest without variation, year by 
 year. I know one such place for Hepatica 
 a mile northeast, — another for May-flower 
 two miles southwest; and each year the 
 whimsical creature is in bloom on that little 
 spot when not another flower can be found 
 open through the whole country round. Ac- 
 cidental as the choice may appear, it is un- 
 doubtedly based on laws more eternal than 
 the stars ; yet why all subtle influences con- 
 spire to bless that undistinguishable knoll no 
 6 
 
The Procession of the Flowers 
 
 man can say. Another and similar puzzle 
 offers itself in the distribution of the tints of 
 flowers, — in these two species among the 
 rest. There are certain localities, near by, 
 where the Hepatica is all but white, and 
 others where the May-flower is sumptuous in 
 pink; yet it is not traceable to wet or dry, 
 sun or shadow, and no agricultural chemistry 
 can disclose the secret. Is it by some Dar- 
 winian law of selection that the white Hepat- 
 ica has utterly overpowered the blue, in our 
 Cascade Woods, for instance, while yet in 
 the very midst of this pale plantation a single 
 clump will sometimes bloom with all heaven 
 on its petals? Why can one recognize the 
 Plymouth May-flower, as soon as seen, by its 
 wondrous depth of color? Perhaps it blushes 
 with triumph to see how Nature has outwitted 
 the Pilgrims, and has even succeeded in pre- 
 serving her deer like an English duke, since 
 she still maintains the deepest woods in Mas- 
 sachusetts precisely where those sturdy immi- 
 grants first began their clearings. 
 
 The Hepatica (called also Liverwort, Squir- 
 rel-Cup, or Blue Anemone) has been found 
 in Worcester as early as March seventeenth, 
 and in Danvers on March twelfth, — r dates 
 which appear almost the extreme of credibil- 
 7 
 
The Procession of the Flowers 
 
 ity. Our next wild-flower in this region is 
 the Claytonia, or Spring-Beauty, which is 
 common in the Middle States, but here found 
 in only a few localities. It is the Indian Mis- 
 kodced, and was said to have been left behind 
 when mighty Peboan, the Winter, was melted 
 by the breath of Spring. It is an exquisitely 
 delicate little creature, bears its blossoms in 
 clusters, unlike most of the early species, and 
 opens in gradual succession each white and 
 pink-veined bell. It grows in moist places 
 on the sunny edges of woods, and prolongs 
 its shy career from about the tenth of April 
 until almost the end of May. 
 
 A week farther into April, and the Blood- 
 root opens, — a name of guilt, and a type of 
 innocence. This fresh and lovely thing ap- 
 pears to concentrate all its stains within its 
 ensanguined root, that it may condense all 
 purity in the peculiar whiteness of its petals. 
 It emerges from the ground with each shy 
 blossom wrapped in its own pale-green leaf, 
 then dofifs the cloak and spreads its long 
 petals round a group of yellow stamens. The 
 flower falls apart so easily, that when in full 
 bloom it will hardly bear transportation, but 
 with a touch the stem stands naked, a bare, 
 gold-tipped sceptre amid drifts of snow. And 
 8 
 
The Procession of the Flowers 
 
 the contradiction of its hues seems carried 
 into its habits. One of the most shy of wild 
 plants, easily banished from its locality by 
 any invasion, it yet takes to the garden with 
 unpardonable readiness, doubles its size, blos- 
 soms earlier, repudiates its love of water, and 
 flaunts its great leaves in the unnatural con- 
 finement, until it elbows out the exotics. Its 
 charm is gone, unless one find it in its native 
 haunts, beside some cascade which streams 
 over rocks that are dark with moisture, green 
 with moss, and snowy with white bubbles. 
 Each spray of dripping feather-moss exudes 
 a tiny torrent of its own, or braided with 
 some tiny neighbor, above the little water- 
 fonts which sleep sunless in ever-verdant 
 caves. Sometimes along these emerald 
 canals there comes a sudden rush and hurry, 
 as if some anxious housekeeper upon the-hill 
 above were afraid that things were not stir- 
 ring fast enough, — and then again the wav- 
 ing and sinuous lines of water are quieted to 
 a serener flow. The delicious red thrush and 
 the busy little yellow-throat are not yet come 
 to this their summer haunt; but all day long 
 the answering field-sparrows trill out their 
 sweet, shy, accelerating lay. 
 
 In the same localities with the Bloodroot, 
 9 
 
The Procession of the Flowers 
 
 though some days later, grows the Dog-Tooth 
 Violet, — a name hopelessly inappropriate, 
 but likely never to be changed. These hardy 
 and prolific creatures have also many local- 
 ities of their own ; for, though they do not 
 acquiesce in cultivation, like the sycophantic 
 Bloodroot, yet they are hard to banish from 
 their native haunts, but linger after the woods 
 are cleared and the meadow drained. The 
 bright flowers blaze back all the yellow light 
 of noonday, as the gay petals curl and spread 
 themselves above their beds of mottled leaves ; 
 but it is always a disappointment to gather 
 them, for indoors they miss the full ardor of 
 the sunbeams, and are apt to go to sleep and 
 nod expressionless from the stalk. 
 
 And almost on the same day with this 
 bright apparition one may greet a multitude 
 of concurrent visitors, arriving so accurately 
 together that it is almost a matter of accident 
 which of the party shall first report himself 
 Perhaps the Dandelion should have the earli- 
 est place ; indeed, I once found it in Brook- 
 line on the seventh of April. But it cannot 
 ordinarily be expected before the twentieth, 
 in Eastern Massachusetts, and rather later in 
 the interior ; while by the same date I have 
 also found near Boston the Cowslip, or 
 
 lO 
 
The Procession of the Flowers 
 
 Marsh-Marigold, the Spring-Saxifrage, the 
 Anemones, the Violets, the Bellwort, the 
 Houstonia, the Cinquefoil, and the Straw- 
 berry-blossom. Varying, of course, in differ- 
 ent spots and years, the arrival of this coterie 
 is yet nearly simultaneous, and they may all 
 be expected hereabouts before May-day at 
 the very latest. After all, in spite of the 
 croakers, this festival could not have been 
 much better timed ; for the delicate blossoms 
 which mark the period are usually in perfec- 
 tion on this day, and it is not long before 
 they are past their prime. 
 
 Some early plants which have now almost 
 disappeared from Eastern Massachusetts are 
 still found near Worcester in the greatest 
 abundance, — as the larger Yellow Violet, 
 the Red Trillium, the dwarf Ginseng, the 
 Clintonia or Wild Lily-of-the-Valley, and the 
 pretty fringed Polygala, which Miss Cooper 
 christened " Gay- Wings." Others, again, are 
 now rare near Worcester, and growing rarer, 
 though still abundant a hundred miles farther 
 inland. In several bits of old, swampy wood 
 one may still find, usually close together, the 
 Hobble-Bush and the Painted Trillium, the 
 Mitella, or Bishop's-Cap, and the snowy Tia- 
 rella. Others still have entirely vanished 
 
 II 
 
The Procession of the Flowers 
 
 within ten years, and that in some cases with- 
 out any adequate explanation. The dainty 
 white Corydalis, profanely called *' Dutch- 
 man's Breeches," and the quaint, woolly 
 Ledum, or Labrador Tea, have disappeared 
 within that time. The beautiful Linnaea is 
 still found annually, but flowers no more ; as 
 is also the case, in all but one distant locality, 
 with the once abundant Rhododendron. 
 Nothing in Nature has for me a more fasci- 
 nating interest than these secret movements of 
 vegetation, — the sweet, blind instinct with 
 which flowers cling to old domains until ab- 
 solutely compelled to forsake them. How 
 touching is the fact, now well known, that 
 salt-water plants still flower beside the Great 
 Lakes, yet dreaming of the time when those 
 waters were briny as the sea ! Nothing in 
 the demonstrations of Geology seems grander 
 than the light lately thrown by Professor 
 Gray, from the analogies between the flora of 
 Japan and of North America, upon the suc- 
 cessive epochs of heat which led the wander- 
 ing flowers along the Arctic lands, and of 
 cold which isolated them once more. Yet 
 doubtless these humble movements of our 
 local plants may be laying up results as 
 important, and may hereafter supply evi- 
 
 12 
 
The Procession of the Flowers 
 
 dence of earth's changes upon some smaller 
 scale. 
 
 May expands to its prime of beauty ; the 
 summer birds come with the fruit-blossoms, 
 the gardens are deluged with bloom, and the 
 air with melody, while in the woods the timid 
 spring flowers fold themselves away in silence 
 and give place to a brighter splendor. On 
 the margin of some quiet swamp a myriad of 
 bare twigs seem suddenly overspread with 
 purple butterflies, and we know that the Rho- 
 dora is in bloom. Wordsworth never immor- 
 talized a flower more surely than Emerson 
 this, and it needs no weaker words ; there is 
 nothing else in which the change from naked- 
 ness to beauty is so sudden, and when you 
 bring home the great mass of blossoms they 
 appear all ready to flutter away again from 
 your hands and leave you disenchanted. 
 
 At the same time the beautiful Cornel-tree 
 is in perfection ; startling as a tree of the 
 tropics, it flaunts its great flowers high up 
 among the forest-branches, intermingling its 
 long, slender twigs with theirs, and garnishing 
 them with alien blooms. It is very available 
 for household decoration, with its four great, 
 creamy petals, — flowers they are not, but 
 floral involucres, — each with a fantastic curl 
 13 
 
The Procession of the Flowers 
 
 and stain at its tip, as if the fire-flies had 
 ahghted on them and scorched them ; and 
 yet I like it best as it peers out in barbaric 
 splendor from the delicate green of young 
 Maples. And beneath it grows often its 
 more abundant kinsman, the Dwarf Cornel, 
 with the same four great petals enveloping its 
 floral cluster, but lingering low upon the 
 ground, — an herb whose blossoms mimic 
 the statelier tree. 
 
 The same rich, creamy hue and texture 
 show themselves in the Wild Calla, which 
 grows at this season in dark, sequestered 
 watercourses, and sometimes well rivals, in 
 all but size, that superb whiteness out of a 
 land of darkness, the Ethiopic Calla of the 
 conservatory. At this season, too, we seek 
 another semi-aquatic rarity, whose homely 
 name cannot deprive it of a certain garden- 
 like elegance, the Buckbean (^Mcnyantlics 
 trifoliatd). This is one of the shy plants 
 which yet grow in profusion within their own 
 domain. I have found it of old in Cambridge, 
 and then upon the pleasant shallows of the 
 Artichoke, that loveliest tributary of the Mer- 
 rimack, and I have never seen it where it oc- 
 cupied a patch more than a few yards square, 
 while yet within that space the multitudinous 
 14 
 
The Procession of the Flowers 
 
 spikes ^row always tall and close, reminding 
 one of Hyacinths, when in perfection, but 
 more delicate and beautiful. The only lo- 
 cality I know for it in this vicinity lies seven 
 miles away, where a little inlet from the lower, 
 winding bays of Lake Quinsigamond goes 
 stealing up among a farmer's hay-fields, and 
 there, close beside the public road and in full 
 view of the farm-house, this rare creature fills 
 the water. But to reach it we commonly row 
 down the lake to a sheltered lagoon, separated 
 from the main lake by a long island, which is 
 gradually forming itself like the coral isles, 
 growing each year denser with alder thickets 
 where the king-birds build ; — there we leave 
 the boat among the lily-leaves, and take a 
 lane which winds among the meadows and 
 gives a fitting avenue for the pretty thing we 
 seek. It is not safe to vary many days from 
 the twentieth of May, for the plant is not long 
 in perfection, and is past its prime when the 
 lower blossoms begin to wither on the stem. 
 
 But should we miss this delicate adjustment 
 of time, it is easy to console ourselves with 
 bright armfuls of Lupine, which bounteously 
 flowers for six weeks along our lakeside, rang- 
 ing from the twenty-third of May to the sixth 
 of July. The Lupine is one of our most 
 15 
 
The Procession of the Flowers 
 
 travelled plants; for, though never seen off 
 the American continent, it stretches to the 
 Pacific, and is found upon the Arctic coast. 
 On these banks of Lake Quinsigamond it 
 grows in great families, and should be gath- 
 ered in masses and placed in a vase by itself; 
 for it needs no relief from other flowers, its 
 own soft leaves afford background enough, 
 and though the white variety rarely occurs, 
 yet the varying tints of blue upon the same 
 stalk are a perpetual gratification to the eye. 
 I know not why shaded blues should be so 
 beautiful in flowers, and yet avoided as dis- 
 tasteful in ladies' fancy-work ; but it is a mys- 
 tery like that which long repudiated blue and 
 green from all well-regulated costumes, while 
 Nature yet evidently prefers it to any other 
 combination in her wardrobe. 
 
 Another constant ornament of the end of 
 May is the large pink Lady's-Slipper, or 
 Moccason-Flower, the " Cypripedium not due 
 till to-morrow," which Emerson attributes to 
 the note-book of Thoreau, — to-morrow, in 
 these parts, meaning about the twentieth of 
 May. It belongs to the family of Orchids, a 
 high-bred race, fastidious in habits, sensitive 
 as to abodes. Of the ten species named as 
 rarest among American endogenous plants by 
 i6 
 
The Procession of the Flowers 
 
 Dr. Gray, in his valuable essay on the statis- 
 tics of our northern flora, all but one are 
 Orchids. Even an abundant species, like the 
 present, retains the family traits in its person, 
 and never loses its high-born air and its deli- 
 cate veining. I know a grove where it can be 
 gathered by the hundred within a half-acre, 
 and yet I never can divest myself of the feel- 
 ing that each specimen is a choice novelty. 
 But the actual rarity occurs, at least in this 
 region, when one finds the smaller and more 
 beautiful Yellow Moccason-Flower, — Cypri- 
 pedium parviflorum, — which accepts only 
 our very choicest botanical locality, the 
 *' Rattlesnake Ledge " on Tatessit Hill, and 
 may, for aught I know, have been the very 
 plant which Elsie Venner laid upon her 
 schoolmistress's desk. 
 
 June is an intermediate month between the 
 spring and summer flowers. Of the more 
 delicate early blossoms, the Dwarf Cornel, 
 the Solomon's-Seal, and the Yellow Violet 
 still linger in the woods, but rapidly make 
 way for larger masses and more conspicuous 
 hues. The meadows are gorgeous with Clover, 
 Buttercups, and Wild Geranium ; but Nature 
 is a little chary for a week or two, maturing 
 a more abundant show. Meanwhile one may 
 17 
 
The Procession of the Flowers 
 
 afford to take some pains to search for an- 
 other rarity, almost disappearing from this 
 region, — the lovely Pink Azalea. It still 
 grows plentifully in a few sequestered places, 
 selecting woody swamps to hide itself; and 
 certainly no shrub suggests, when found, 
 more tropical associations. Those great, 
 nodding, airy, fragrant clusters, tossing far 
 above one's head their slender cups of honey, 
 seem scarcely to belong to our sober zone, 
 any more than the scarlet tanagcr which 
 sometimes builds its nest beside them. They 
 appear' bright exotics, which have wandered 
 into our woods, and arc too happy to feel 
 any wish for exit. And just as they fade, 
 their humble sister in white begins to bloom, 
 and carries on through the summer the same 
 intoxicating fragrance. 
 
 But when June is at its height, the sculp- 
 tured chalices of the Mountain Laurel begin 
 to unfold, and thenceforward, for more than 
 a month, extends the reign of this our wood- 
 land queen. I know not why one should 
 sigh after the blossoming gorges of the Him- 
 alaya, when our forests are all so crowded 
 with this glowing magnificence, — rounding 
 the tangled swamps into smoothness, lighting 
 up the underwoods, overtopping the pastures, 
 i8 
 
The Procession of the Flowers 
 
 lining the rural lanes, and rearing its great, 
 pinkish masses till they meet overhead. The 
 color ranges from the purest white to a per- 
 fect rose-pink, and there is an inexhaustible 
 vegetable vigor about the whole thing which 
 puts to shame those tenderer shrubs that 
 shrink before the progress of cultivation. 
 There is the Rhododendron, for instance, 
 a plant of the same natural family with the 
 Laurel and the Azalea, and looking more 
 robust and woody than either ; it once grew 
 in many localities in this region, and still lin- 
 gers in a few, without consenting either to 
 die or to blossom. There is only one remote 
 place from which any one now brings into 
 our streets those large, luxuriant flowers, 
 waving white above the dark green leaves, 
 and bearing " just a dream of sunset on their 
 edges, and just a breath from the green sea 
 in their hearts." The Laurel, on the other 
 hand, maintains its ground, imperturbable and 
 almost impassable, on every hillside, takes no 
 hints, suspects no danger, and nothing but 
 the most unmistakable onset from spade or 
 axe can diminish its profusion. Gathering it 
 on the most lavish scale seems only to serve 
 as wholesale pruning; nor can I conceive 
 that the Indians, who once ruled over this 
 19 
 
The Procession of the Flowers 
 
 whole country from Wigwam Hill, could ever 
 have found it more inconveniently abundant 
 than now. We have perhaps no single spot 
 where it grows in such perfect picturesque- 
 ness as at '* The Laurels," on the Merrimack, 
 just above Newburyport, — a whole hillside 
 scooped out and the hollow piled solidly with 
 flowers, and pines curving around it above, 
 and the river encircling it below, on which 
 your boat glides along, while you look up 
 through ghnimering arcades of bloom. But 
 for the last half of June it monopolizes every- 
 thing in the Worcester woods, — no one picks 
 anything else ; and it fades so slowly that I 
 have found a perfect blossom on the last day 
 of July. 
 
 At the same time with this royalty of the 
 woods, the queen of the water ascends her 
 throne, for a reign as undisputed and far 
 more prolonged. The extremes of the 
 Water-Lily in this vicinity, so far as I have 
 known, are the eighteenth of June and the 
 thirteenth of October, — a longer range than 
 belongs to any other conspicuous wild-flower, 
 unless we except the Dandelion and Hous- 
 tonia. It is not only the most fascinating of 
 all flowers to gather, but more available for 
 decorative purposes than almost any other, 
 
 20 
 
The Procession of the Flowers 
 
 if it can only be kept fresh. The best method 
 for this purpose, I believe, is to cut the stalk 
 very short before placing in the vase ; then, 
 at night, the lily will close and the stalk curl 
 upward ; refresh them by changing the 
 water, and in the morning the stalk will be 
 straight and the flower open. 
 
 From this time forth Summer has it all her 
 own way. After the first of July the yellow 
 flowers begin, matching the yellow fire-flies : 
 Hawkweeds, Loosestrifes, Primroses bloom, 
 and the bushy Wild Indigo. The variety 
 of hues increases ; delicate purple Orchises 
 bloom in their chosen haunts, and Wild 
 Roses blush over hill and dale. On peat- 
 meadows the Adder's-Tongue Arethusa (now 
 called Pogonia) flowers profusely, with a 
 faint, delicious perfume, — and its more 
 elegant cousin, the Calopogon, by its side. 
 In this vicinity we miss the blue Harebell, the 
 identical harebell of Ellen Douglas, which I 
 remember as waving its exquisite flowers 
 along the banks of the Merrimack, and again 
 at Brattleborough, below the cascade in the 
 village, where it has climbed the precipitous 
 sides of old buildings, and nods inaccessibly 
 from their crevices, in that picturesque spot, 
 looking down .on the hurrying river. But, 
 
 21 
 
The Procession of the Flowers 
 
 with this exception, there is nothing wanting 
 here of the familiar flowers of early summer. 
 
 The more closely one studies Nature, the 
 finer her adaptations grow. For instance, the 
 change of seasons is analogous to a change 
 of zones, and summer assimilates our vegeta- 
 tion to that of the tropics. In those lands, 
 Humboldt has remarked, one misses the 
 beauty of wild-flowers in the grass, because 
 the luxuriance of vegetation develops every- 
 thing into shrubs. The form and color are 
 beautiful, " but, being too high above the 
 soil, they disturb that harmonious proportion 
 which characterizes the plants of our Euro- 
 pean meadows. Nature has, in every zone, 
 stamped on the landscape the peculiar type 
 of beauty proper to the locality." But every 
 midsummer reveals the same tendency. In 
 early spring, when all is bare, and small 
 objects are easily made prominent, the wild- 
 flowers are generally delicate. Later, when all 
 verdure is profusely expanded, these minia- 
 ture strokes would be lost, and Nature then 
 practises landscape gardening in large, lights 
 up the copses wdth great masses of White 
 Alder, makes the roadsides gay with Aster 
 and Golden-Rod, and tops the tall, coarse 
 Meadow-Grass with nodding Lilies and tufted 
 
 22 
 
The Procession of the Flowers 
 
 Spiraea. One instinctively follows these plain 
 hints, and gathers bouquets sparingly in 
 spring and exuberantly in summer. 
 
 The use of wild-flowers for decorative pur- 
 poses merits a word in passing, for it is un- 
 questionably in favored hands a branch of high 
 art. It is true that we are bidden, on good 
 authority, to love the wood-rose and leave it 
 on its stalk ; but against this may be set the 
 saying of Bettme Brentano, that " all flowers 
 which are broken become immortal in the 
 sacrifice ; " and certainly the secret harmonies 
 of these fair creatures are so marked and deli- 
 cate that we do not understand them till we 
 try to group floral decorations for ourselves. 
 The most successful artists will not, for in- 
 stance, consent to put those together which 
 do not grow together ; for Nature understands 
 her business, and distributes her masses and 
 backgrounds unerringly. Yonder soft and 
 feathery Meadow-Sweet longs to be com- 
 bined with Wild Roses : it yearns towards 
 them in the field, and, after withering in the 
 hand most readily, it revives in water as if to 
 be with them in the vase. In the same way 
 the White Spiraea serves as natural background 
 for the Field Lilies. These lilies, by the way, 
 are the brightest adornment of our meadows 
 23 
 
The Procession of the Flowers 
 
 during the short period of their perfection. 
 We have two species, — one slender, erect, 
 solitary, scarlet, looking up to heaven with 
 all its blushes on ; the other clustered, droop- 
 ing, pale-yellow. I never saw the former in 
 such profusion as on the bare summit of 
 Wachusett. The granite ribs have there a 
 thin covering of crisp moss, spangled with 
 the white, starry blossoms of the Mountain 
 Cinquefoil ; and as I lay and watched the red 
 lilies that waved their innumerable urns 
 around me, it needed but little imagination 
 to see a thousand altars, sending visible flames 
 forever upward to the answering sun. 
 
 August comes: the Thistles are in bloom, 
 beloved of butterflies ; deeper and deeper 
 tints, more passionate intensities of color, 
 prepare the way for the year's decline. A 
 wealth of gorgeous Golden-Rod waves over 
 all the hills, and enriches every bouquet one 
 gathers ; its bright colors conimand the eye, 
 and it is graceful as an elm. Fitly arranged, 
 it gives a bright relief to the superb beauty 
 of the Cardinal-Flowers, the brilliant blue- 
 purple of the Vervain, 'the pearl-white of the 
 Life-Everlasting, the delicate lilac of the Mon- 
 key-Flower, the soft pink and white of the 
 Spiraeas, — for the white yet lingers, — all sur- 
 24 
 
The Procession of the Flowers 
 
 rounded by trailing wreaths of blossoming 
 Clematis. 
 
 But the Cardinal-Flower is best seen by 
 itself, and, indeed, needs the surroundings of 
 its native haunts to display its fullest beauty. 
 Its favorite abode is along the dank, mossy 
 stones of some black and winding brook, 
 shaded with overarching bushes, and running 
 one long stream of scarlet with these superb 
 occupants. It seems amazing how anything 
 so brilliant can mature in such a darkness. 
 When a ray of sunlight strays in upon it, the 
 bright creature seems to hover on the stalk 
 ready to take flight, like some lost tropic 
 bird. There is a spot whence I have in ten 
 minutes brought away as many as I could 
 hold in both arms, some bearing fifty blos- 
 soms on a single stalk ; and I could not be- 
 lieve that there was such another mass of color 
 in the world. Nothing cultivated is compar- 
 able to them ; and, with all the talent lately 
 lavished on wild-flower painting, I have never 
 seen the peculiar sheen of these petals in the 
 least degree delineated. It seems some new 
 and separate tint, equally distinct from scarlet 
 and from crimson, a splendor for which there 
 is as yet no name, but only the reality. 
 
 It is the signal of autumn, when September 
 25 
 
The Procession of the Flowers 
 
 exhibits the first Barrel-Gentian by the road- 
 side; and there is a pretty insect in the 
 meadows — the Mourning-Cloak Moth it 
 might be called — which gives coincident 
 warning. The innumerable Asters mark this 
 period with their varied and wide-spread 
 beauty ; the meadows are full of rose-colored 
 Polygala, of the white spiral spikes of the 
 Ladies'-Tresses, and of the fringed loveliness 
 of the Gentian. This flower, always unique 
 and beautiful, opening its delicate eyelashes 
 every morning to the sunlight, closing them 
 again each night, has also a thoughtful charm 
 about it as the last of the year's especial dar- 
 lings. It lingers long, each remaining blos- 
 som growing larger and more deep in color, 
 as with many other flowers ; and after it there 
 is nothing for which to look forward, save the 
 fantastic Witch-Hazel. 
 
 On the water, meanwhile, the last White 
 Lilies are sinking beneath the surface, and 
 the last gay Pickerel-Weed is gone, though 
 the rootless plants of the delicate Bladder- 
 Wort, spreading over acres of shallows, still 
 impurple the wide, smooth surface. Harriet 
 Prescott Spofl*ord says that some souls are 
 like the Watcr-Lilies, fixed, yet floating. 
 But others are like this graceful purple blos- 
 26 
 
The Procession of the Flowers 
 
 som, floating unfixed, kept in place only by 
 its fellows around it, until perhaps a breeze 
 comes, and, breaking the accidental cohesion, 
 sweeps them all away. 
 
 The season reluctantly yields its reign, and 
 over the quiet autumnal landscape every- 
 where, even after the glory of the trees is 
 past, there are tints and fascinations of minor 
 beauty. Last October, for instance, in walk- 
 ing, I found myself on a little knoll, looking 
 northward. Overhead was a bower of chmb- 
 ing Waxwork, with its yellowish pods scarce 
 disclosing their scarlet berries, — a wild Grape- 
 vine, with its fruit withered by the frost into 
 still purple raisins, — and yellow Beech-leaves, 
 detaching themselves with an effort audible 
 to the ear. In the foreground were blue 
 Raspberry-stems, yet bearing greenish leaves, 
 
 — pale-yellow Witch-Hazel, almost leafless, 
 
 — purple Viburnum-berries, — the silky co- 
 coons of the Milkweed, — and, amid the 
 underbrush, a few lingering Asters and 
 Golden-Rods, Ferns still green, and Maiden- 
 hair, bleached white. In the background 
 were hazy hills, white Birches bare and snow- 
 like, and a Maple half-way up a sheltered 
 hillside, one mass of canary-color, its fallen 
 leaves making an apparent reflection on the 
 
 27 
 
The Procession of the Flowers 
 
 earth at its foot, — and then a real reflection, 
 fused into a glassy light intenser than itself, 
 upon the smooth, dark stream below. The 
 beautiful disrobing suggested the persistent 
 and unconquerable delicacy of Nature, who 
 shrinks from nakedness and is always seeking 
 to veil her graceful boughs, — if not with 
 leaves, then with feathery hoar-frost, ermined 
 snow, or transparent icy armor. 
 
 After all, the fascination of summer lies not 
 in any details, however perfect, but in the 
 sense of total wealth that summer gives. 
 Wholly to enjoy this, one must give one's 
 self passively to it, and not expect to repro- 
 duce it in words. We stri\e to picture hea- 
 ven, when we are barely at the threshold of 
 the inconceivable beauty of earth. Perhaps 
 the truant boy who simply bathes himself in 
 the lake and then basks in the sunshine, 
 dimly conscious of the exquisite loveliness 
 around him, is wiser, because humbler, than 
 is he who with presumptuous phrases tries 
 to utter it. There are moments when the 
 atmosphere is so surcharged with luxury 
 that every pore of the body becomes an 
 ample gate for sensation to flow in, and one 
 has simply to sit still and be filled. In after 
 years the memory of books seems barren or 
 28 
 
The Procession of the Flowers 
 
 vanishing, compared with the immortal be- 
 quest of hours like these. Other sources of 
 illumination seem cisterns only; these are 
 fountains. They may not increase the mere 
 quantity of available thought, but they im- 
 part to it a quality which is priceless. No 
 man can measure what a single hour with 
 Nature may have contributed to the mould- 
 ing of his mind. The influence is self-renew- 
 ing, and if for a long time It baffles expression 
 by reason of its fineness, so much the better 
 in the end. 
 
 The soul is like a musical instrument : it is 
 not enough that it be framed for the most 
 delicate vibration, but it must vibrate long 
 and often before the fibres grow mellow to 
 the finest waves of sympathy. I perceive 
 that in the veery's carolling, the clover's 
 scent, the glistening of the water, the waving 
 wings of butterflies, the sunset tints, the float- 
 ing clouds, there are attainable infinitely more 
 subtile modulations of thought than I can yet 
 reach the sensibility to discriminate, much 
 less describe. If in the simple process of 
 writing one could physically impart to this 
 page the fragrance of this spray of Azalea 
 beside me, what a wonder would it seem ! — 
 and yet one ought to be able, by the mere 
 29 
 
The Procession of the Flowers 
 
 use of language, to supply to every reader 
 the total of that white, honeyed, trailing 
 sweetness, which summer insects haunt and 
 the Spirit of the Universe loves. The defect 
 is not in language, but in men. There is no 
 conceivable beauty of blossom so beautiful 
 as words, — none so graceful, none so per- 
 fumed. It is possible to dream of combina- 
 tions of syllables so delicious that all the 
 dawning and decay of summer cannot rival 
 their perfection, nor winter's stainless white 
 and azure match their purity and their 
 charm. To wTite them, were it possible, 
 would be to take rank with Nature; nor is 
 there any other method, even by music, for 
 human art to reach so high. 
 
 3c 
 
II 
 
 APRIL DAYS 
 
II 
 
 APRIL DAYS 
 
 Can trouble dwell with April days ? 
 
 /;/ Memoriam. 
 
 IN our methodical American life, we still 
 recognize some magic in summer. Most 
 persons at least resign themselves to being 
 decently happy in June. They accept June. 
 They compliment its weather. They com- 
 plain of the earlier months as cold, and so 
 spend them in the city ; and they complain 
 of the later months as hot, and so refrigerate 
 themselves on some barren sea-coast. God 
 offers us yearly a necklace of twelve pearls ; 
 most men choose the fairest, label it June, 
 and cast the rest away. It is time to chant a 
 hymn of more liberal gratitude. 
 
 There are no days in the whole round year 
 more delicious than those which often come 
 to us in the latter half of April. On these 
 days one goes forth in the morning, and finds 
 an Italian warmth brooding over all the hills, 
 3 ZZ 
 
April Days 
 
 taking visible shape in a glistening mist of 
 silvered azure, with which mingles the smoke 
 from many bonfires. The sun trembles in 
 his own soft rays, till one understands the old 
 Enghsh tradition, that he dances on Easter- 
 Day. Swimming in a sea of glory, the tops 
 of the hills look nearer than their bases, 
 and their glistening watercourses seem close 
 to the eye, as is their liberated murmur to 
 the ear. All across this broad intervale 
 the teams are ploughing. The grass in the 
 meadow seems all to have grown green since 
 yesterday. The blackbirds jangle in the oak, 
 the robin is perched upon the elm, the song- 
 sparrow on the hazel, and the bluebird on 
 the apple-tree. There, rises a hawk and sails 
 slowly, the stateliest of airy things, a floating 
 dream of long and languid summer-hours. 
 But as yet, though there is warmth enough 
 for a sense of luxury, there is coolness 
 enough for exertion. No tropics can offer 
 such a burst of joy ; indeed, no zone much 
 warmer than our Northern States can offer a 
 genuine spring. There can be none where 
 there is no winter, and the monotone of the 
 seasons is broken only by wearisome rains. 
 Vegetation and birds being distributed over 
 the year, there is no burst of verdure nor of 
 34 
 
April Days 
 
 song. But with us, as the buds are swelling, 
 the birds are arriving; they are building 
 their nests almost simultaneously ; and in all 
 the Southern year there is no such rapture of 
 beauty and of melody as here marks every 
 morning from the last of April onward. 
 
 But days even earlier than these, in April, 
 have a charm, — even days that seem raw 
 and rainy, when the sky is dull and a bequest 
 of March-wind lingers, chasing the squirrel 
 from the tree and the children from the 
 meadows. There is a fascination in walking 
 through these bare early woods, — there is 
 such a pause of preparation, winter's work is 
 so cleanly and thoroughly done. Everything 
 is taken down and put away ; throughout the 
 leafy arcades the branches show no remnant 
 of last year, save a few twisted leaves of oak 
 and beech, a few empty seed-vessels of the 
 tardy witch-hazel, and a few gnawed nutshells 
 dropped coquettishly by the squirrels into 
 the crevices of the bark. All else is bare, 
 but prophetic : buds everywhere, the whole 
 splendor of the coming summer concentrated 
 in those hard little knobs on every bough ; 
 and clinging here and there among them a 
 brown, papery chrysalis, from which shall 
 yet wave the superb wings of the Luna moth. 
 35 
 
April Days 
 
 An occasional shower patters on the dry 
 leaves, but it does not silence the robin on 
 the outskirts of the wood : indeed, he sings 
 louder than ever during rain, though the 
 song-sparrow and the bluebird are silent. 
 
 Then comes the sweetness of the nights in 
 latter April. There is as yet no evening-prim- 
 rose to open suddenly, no cistus to drop its 
 petals ; but the May-flower knows the mo- 
 ment, and becomes more fragrant in the dark- 
 ness, so that one can then often find it in the 
 woods without aid from the eye. The pleas- 
 ant night-sounds are begun ; the hylas are 
 uttering their shrill peep from the meadows, 
 mingled soon with hoarser toads, who take 
 to the water at this season to deposit their 
 spawn. The tree-toads soon join them ; but 
 one listens in vain for bull-frogs, or katy- 
 dids, or grasshoppers, or whippoorwills, or 
 crickets : we must wait for most of these 
 until the nights of June. 
 
 The earliest familiar token of the corning 
 season is the expansion of the stiff catkins of 
 the alder into soft, drooping tresses. These 
 are so sensitive, that, if you pluck them at 
 almost any time during the winter, a few 
 days' sunshine will make them open in a 
 vase of water, and thus they eagerly yield to 
 36 
 
April Days 
 
 every moment of April warmth. The blos- 
 som of the birch is more delicate, that of the 
 willow more showy, but the alders come first. 
 They cluster and dance everywhere upon the 
 bare boughs above the watercourses; the 
 blackness of the buds is softened into rich 
 brown and yellow ; and as this graceful crea- 
 ture thus comes waving into the spring, it is 
 pleasant to remember that the Norse Eddas 
 fabled the first woman to have been named 
 Embla, because she was created from an 
 alder-bough. 
 
 The first wild-flower of the year is like 
 land after sea. The two which, throughout 
 the Northern Atlantic States, divide this 
 interest are the EpigcBa repcns (May-flower, 
 ground-laurel, or trailing-arbutus) and the 
 Hepatica triloba (liverleaf, liverwort, or blue 
 anemone). Of these two, the latter is per- 
 haps more immediately exciting on first 
 discovery, because it is an annual, not a per- 
 ennial, and so does not, like the epigaea, 
 exhibit its buds all winter, but opens its blue 
 eyes almost as soon as it emerges from the 
 ground. Without the rich and delicious 
 odor of its compeer, it has an inexpressibly 
 fresh and earthy scent, that seems to bring 
 all the promise of the blessed season with it; 
 37 
 
April Days 
 
 indeed, that clod of fresh turf with the inhala- 
 tion of which Lord Bacon delighted to begin 
 the day must undoubtedly have been full of 
 the roots of our little hepatica. Its healthy 
 sweetness belongs to the opening year, like 
 Chaucer's poetry ; and one thinks that any- 
 thing more potent and voluptuous would be 
 less enchanting — until one turns to the May- 
 flower. Then comes a richer fascination for 
 the senses. To pick the May-flower is like 
 following in the footsteps of some spendthrift 
 army which has scattered the contents of its 
 treasure-chest among beds of scented moss. 
 The fingers sink in the soft, moist verdure, 
 and make at each instant some superb dis- 
 covery unawares ; again and again, straying 
 carelessly, they clutch some new treasure; 
 and, indeed, the plants are linked together in 
 bright necklaces by secret 'threads beneath 
 the surface, and where you grasp at one, you 
 hold many. The hands go wandering over 
 the moss as over the keys of a piano, and 
 bring forth odors for melodies. The lovely 
 creatures twine and nestle and lay their glow- 
 ing faces to the very earth beneath withered 
 leaves, and what seemed mere barrenness 
 becomes fresh and fragrant beauty. So great 
 is the charm of the pursuit, that the epigaea 
 38 
 
April Days 
 
 is really the wild-flower for which our country- 
 people have a hearty passion. Every village 
 child knows its best haunts, and watches for 
 it eagerly in the spring; boys wreathe their 
 hats with it, girls twine it in their hair, and 
 the cottage windows are filled with its 
 beauty. 
 
 In collecting these early flowers, one finds 
 or fancies singular natural affinities. I flatter 
 myself with being able always to discover 
 hepatica, if there is any within reach, for I 
 was brought up with it; but other persons, 
 who were brought up with May-flower, and 
 remember searching for it with their childish 
 fingers, can find that better. The most re- 
 markable instance of these natural affinities 
 was in the case of Levi Thaxter and his 
 double anemones. Thaxter had always a gift 
 for wild-flowers, and used often to bring to 
 Cambridge the largest white anemones that 
 were ever seen, from a certain special hill in 
 Watertown ; they were not only magnificent 
 in size and whiteness, but had that exquisite 
 blue on the outside of the petals, as if the sky 
 had bent down in ecstasy at last over its 
 darlings, and left visible kisses there. But 
 even this success was not enough, and one 
 day he came with something yet choicer. It 
 39 
 
April Days 
 
 was a rue-leaved anemone (A. thalictroides) ; 
 and each one of the three white flowers was 
 double, not merely with that multiplicity of 
 petals in the disk which is common with this 
 species, but technically and horticulturally 
 double, like the double-flowering almond or 
 cherry, — with the most exquisitely delicate 
 little petals, like fairy lace-work. He had 
 three specimens, and gave one to Professor 
 Asa Gray, of Harvard, who said it was almost 
 or quite unexampled, and another to me. As 
 the man in the fable says of the chameleon, 
 " I have it yet and can produce it." 
 
 Now comes the marvel. The next winter 
 Thaxter went to New York for a year, and 
 wrote to me, as spring drew near, with solemn 
 charge to visit his favorite haunt and find 
 another specimen. Armed with this letter of 
 introduction, I sought the spot, and tramped 
 through and through its leafy corridors. 
 Beautiful wood-anemones I found, to be 
 sure, trembling on their fragile, stems, deserv- 
 ing all their pretty names, — Wind-flower, 
 Easter-flower, Pasque-Flower, and homoeo- 
 pathic Pulsatilla ; — rue-leaved anemones I 
 found also, rising taller and straighter and 
 firmer in stem, with the whorl of leaves a 
 little higher up on the stalk than one fancies 
 40 
 
April Days 
 
 it ought to be, as if there were a supposed 
 danger that the flowers would lose their 
 balance, and as if the leaves must be all ready 
 to catch them. These I found, but the 
 special wonder was not there for me. Then 
 I wrote to him that he must evidently come 
 himself and search ; or that, perhaps, as 
 Sir Thomas Browne avers that " smoke doth 
 follow the fairest," so his little treasures had 
 followed him towards New York. Judge of 
 my surprise, when, on opening his next letter, 
 out dropped, from those folds of metropolitan 
 paper, a veritable double anemone. He had 
 just been out to Hoboken, or some such 
 place, to spend an afternoon, and, of course, 
 his pets were there to meet him; and from 
 that day to this I have never heard of such 
 an event as happening to any one else. 
 
 May-Day is never allowed to pass in this 
 community without profuse lamentations over 
 the tardiness of our spring as compared with 
 that of England and the poets. Yet it is easy 
 to exaggerate this difference. Even so good 
 an observer as Wilson Flagg is betrayed into 
 saying that the epigaea and hepatica '' seldom 
 make their appearance until after the middle 
 of April " in Massachusetts, and that " it is 
 not unusual for the whole month of April to 
 41 
 
April Days 
 
 pass away without producing more than two 
 or three species of wild-flowers." But I have 
 formerly found the hepatica in bloom at 
 Mount Auburn, for three successive years, on 
 the twenty-seventh of March; and it has 
 since been found in Worcester on the seven- 
 teenth, and in Danvers on the twelfth. The 
 May-flower is usually as early, though the 
 more gradual expansion of the buds renders 
 it less easy to give dates. And there are 
 nearly twenty species which I have noted, for 
 five or six years together, as found always 
 before May-Day, and therefore properly to be 
 assigned to April. The list includes blood- 
 root, cowslip, houstonia, saxifrage, dandelion, 
 chickweed, cinquefoil, strawberry, mouse-ear, 
 bellwort, dog's-tooth violet, five species of 
 violet proper, and two of anemone. These 
 are all common flowers, and easily observed ; 
 but the catalogue might be increased by rare 
 ones, as the white corydalis, the smaller 
 yellow violet ( F. rotundifolia) , and the clay- 
 tonia or spring-beauty. 
 
 But in England the crocus and the snow- 
 drop — neither being probably an indigenous 
 flower, since neither is mentioned by Chaucer 
 ■ — usually open before the first of March; 
 indeed, the snowdrop was formerly known by 
 42 
 
April Days 
 
 the yet more fanciful name of " Fair Maid of 
 February." Chaucer's daisy comes equally 
 early; and March brings daffodils, narcissi, 
 violets, daisies, jonquils, hyacinths, and marsh- 
 marigolds. This is altogether in advance of 
 our season, so far as the wild-flowers give evi- 
 dence, — though snowdrops are sometimes 
 found in February even here. But, on the 
 other hand, it would appear that, though a 
 larger number of birds winter in England 
 than in Massachusetts, yet the return of those 
 which migrate is actually earlier among us. 
 From journals which were kept during sixty 
 years in England, and an abstract of which 
 is printed in Hone's '' Every-Day Book," it 
 appears that only two birds of passage revisit 
 England before the fifteenth of April, and 
 only thirteen more before the first of May ; 
 while with us the song-sparrow, the bluebird, 
 and the red-winged blackbird appear about 
 the first of March, and a good many more by 
 the middle of April. This is a pecuHarity of 
 the English spring which I have never seen 
 explained or even mentioned. 
 
 After the epigaea and the hepatica have 
 
 blossomed, there is a slight pause among the 
 
 wild-flowers, — these two forming a distinct 
 
 prologue for their annual drama, as the bril- 
 
 43 
 
April Days 
 
 liant witch-"hazel in October brings up its 
 separate epilogue. The truth is, Nature atti- 
 tudinizes a little, liking to make a neat finish 
 with everything, and then to begin again with 
 eclat. Flowers seem spontaneous things 
 enough, but there is evidently a secret mar- 
 shalling among them, that all may be brought 
 out with due effect. As the country-people 
 say that so long as any snow is left on the 
 ground more snow may be expected, for it 
 must all vanish together at last, — so every 
 seeker of spring-flowers has observed how 
 accurately they seem to move in platoonS;. 
 with little straggling. Each species seems to 
 burst upon us with a united impulse; you 
 may search for it day after day in vain, but 
 the day when you find one specimen the spell 
 is broken and you find twenty. By the end 
 of April all the margins of the great poem of 
 the woods are illuminated with these exquisite 
 vignettes. 
 
 Most of the early flowers either come be- 
 fore the full unfolding of their leaves, or else 
 have inconspicuous ones. Yet Nature always 
 provides for her garlands the due proportion 
 of green. The verdant and graceful sprays 
 of the wild raspberry are unfolded very early, 
 long before its time of flowering. Over the 
 44 
 
April Days 
 
 meadows spread the regular Chinese-pagodas 
 of the equisetum (horsetail or scouring-rush), 
 and the rich, coarse vegetation of the vera- 
 trum, or American hellebore. In moist 
 copses the ferns and osmundas begin to un- 
 curl in April, opening their soft coils of 
 spongy verdure, coated with woolly down, 
 from which the humming-bird steals the lin- 
 ing of her nest. 
 
 The early blossoms represent the aborigi- 
 nal epoch of our history : the bloodroot and 
 the May-flower are older than the white man, 
 older perchance than the red man; they 
 alone are the true Native Americans. Of the 
 later wild plants, many of the most common 
 are foreign importations. In our sycophancy 
 we attach grandeur to the name " exotic ; " 
 we call aristocratic garden-flowers by that 
 epithet ; yet they are no more exotic than the 
 humbler companions they brought with them, 
 which have become naturalized. The dande- 
 lion, the buttercup, chickweed, celandine, 
 mullein, burdock, yarrow, whiteweed, night- 
 shade, and most of the thistles, — these are 
 importations. Miles Standish never crushed 
 them with his heavy heel as he strode forth 
 to give battle to the savages ; they never 
 kissed the daintier foot of Priscilla, the Puri- 
 45 
 
April Days 
 
 tan maiden. It is noticeable that these are 
 all of rather coarser texture than our indige- 
 nous flowers; the children instinctively recog- 
 nize this, and are apt to omit them when 
 gathering the more delicate native blossoms 
 of the woods. 
 
 There is something touching in the gradual 
 retirement before civilization of these fragile 
 aborigines. They do not wait for the actual 
 brute contact of red bricks and curbstones, 
 but they feel the danger miles away. The 
 Indians called the low plantain " the white 
 man's footstep;" and these shy creatures 
 gradually disappear the moment the red man 
 gets beyond hearing. Bigelow's delightful 
 book " Florula Bostoniensis" is becoming a 
 series of epitaphs. Too well we know it, — 
 those of us who in happy Cambridge child- 
 hood often gathered, almost within a stone's- 
 throw of Professor Agassiz's new museum, the 
 arethusa and the gentian, the cardinal-flower 
 and the gaudy rhexia, — we who remember 
 the last secret hiding-place of the rhodora in 
 West Cambridge, of the yellow violet and the 
 Viola debilis in Watertown, of the Convallaria 
 trifolia near Fresh Pond, of the Hottonia be- 
 yond Wellington's Hill, of the Corniis florida 
 in West Roxbury, of the Clintonia and the 
 46 
 
April Days 
 
 dwarf ginseng in Brookline, — we who have 
 found in its one chosen nook the sacred An- 
 dromeda polifolia of Linnaeus. Now vanished 
 almost or wholly from city suburbs, these 
 fragile creatures still linger in more rural parts 
 of Massachusetts ; butthey are doomed every- 
 where, unconsciously, yet irresistibly; while 
 others still more shy, as the Linn(2a, the 
 yellow Cypripedium, the early pink Azalea, 
 and the delicate white Corydalis or '* Dutch- 
 man's breeches," are being chased into the 
 very recesses of the Green and White Moun- 
 tains. The reHcs of the Indian tribes are 
 supported by the Legislature at Martha's 
 Vineyard, while these precursors of the Indian 
 are dying unfriended away. 
 
 And with these receding plants go also the 
 special insects which haunt them. Who that 
 knew the pure enthusiast, Dr. Thaddeus Wil- 
 liam Harris, but remembers the accustomed 
 lamentations of the entomologist over the de- 
 parture of these winged companions of his life- 
 time ? In a letter which I happened to receive 
 from him a short time previous to his death, 
 he thus renewed the lament : '' I mourn for 
 the loss of many of the beautiful plants and 
 insects that were once found in this vicinity. 
 Clethray Rhodora, Sanguinaria, Viola dcbiliSy 
 47 
 
April Days 
 
 Viola acuta, Draccena horealis, Rhexiay Cypri- 
 pediiini, CorallorJiiza vcrna, Orchis spcctabilis, 
 with others of less note, have been rooted 
 out by the so-called hand of improvement. 
 Cicindcla rugifrojis, Hclluo prceusta, Sphcero- 
 derus stenostonnis, Blctliisa qiiadricollis {^Amer- 
 icana mi), Carabus, Horia (which for several 
 years occurred in profusion on the sands 
 beyond Mount Auburn), with others, have 
 entirely disappeared from their former 
 haunts, driven away, or exterminated per- 
 haps, by the changes effected therein. There 
 may still remain in your vicinity some se- 
 questered spots, congenial to these and other 
 rarities, which may reward the botanist and 
 the entomologist who will search them care- 
 fully. Perhaps you may find there the pretty 
 coccinella-shaped, silver-margined OmopJiron, 
 or the still rarer Panagoeits fasciatus, of which 
 I once took two specimens on Wellington's 
 Hill, but have not seen it since." Is not this, 
 indeed, handling one's specimens " gently as 
 if you loved them," as Isaak Walton bids the 
 angler do with his worm? 
 
 There is this merit, at least, among the 
 
 coarser crew of imported flowers, that they 
 
 bring their own proper names with them, and 
 
 we know precisely with whom we have to 
 
 48 
 
April Days 
 
 deal. In speaking of our own native flowers 
 we must either be careless and inaccurate, or 
 else resort sometimes to the Latin, in spite of 
 the indignation of friends. There is some- . 
 thing yet to be said on this point. In Eng- 
 land, where the old household and monkish 
 names adhere, they are sufficient for popular 
 and poetic purposes, and the familiar use of 
 scientific names seems an affectation. But 
 here, where many native flowers have no 
 popular names at all, and others are called 
 confessedly by wrong ones, — where it really 
 costs less trouble to use Latin names than 
 English, — the affectation seems the other 
 way. Think of the long list of wild-flowers 
 where the Latin name is spontaneously used 
 by all who speak of the flower : as, Arethusa, 
 Aster, Cistus C' after the fall of the cistus- 
 flower"). Clematis, Clethra, Geranium, Iris, 
 Lobelia, Rhodora, Spiraea, Tiarella, Trien- 
 talis, and so on. Even those formed from 
 proper names — the worst possible system of 
 nomenclature — become tolerable at last, and 
 we forget the godfather in the more attractive 
 namesake. When the person concerned hap- 
 pens to be a botanist, there is a peculiar fit- 
 ness in the association ; the Linnaea, at least, 
 would not smell so sweet by any other name. 
 4 49 
 
April Days 
 
 In other cases the English name is a mere 
 modification of the Latin one, and our ideal 
 associations have really a scientific basis : as 
 with Violet, Lily, Laurel, Gentian, Vervain. 
 Indeed, our enthusiasm for vernacular names 
 is, like that for Indian names of localities, one- 
 sided : we enumerate only the graceful ones, 
 and ignore the rest. It would be a pity to 
 Latinize Touch-me-not, or Yarrow, or Gold 
 Thread, or Self-Heal, or Columbine, or Blue- 
 Eyed Grass, — though, to be sure, this last 
 has an annoying way of shutting up its azure 
 orbs the moment you gather it, and you 
 reach home with a bare, stiff blade, which 
 deserves no better name than SisyriiicJiium 
 anccps. But in what respect is Cucumber- 
 Root preferable to Medeola, or Solomon's- 
 Seal to Convallaria, or Rock-Tripe to Umbi- 
 licaria, or Lousewort to Pedicularis? In 
 other cases the merit is divided : Anemone 
 may dispute the prize of melody with Wind- 
 flower, Campanula with Harebell, Neottia 
 with Ladies'-Tresses, Uvularia with Bellwort 
 and Strawbell, Potentilla with Cinquefoil, and 
 Sanguinaria with Bloodroot. Hepatica may 
 be bad, but Liverleaf is worse. The pretty 
 name of May-flower is not so popular, after 
 all, as that of Trailing-Arbutus, where the 
 50 
 
April Days 
 
 graceful and appropriate adjective redeems 
 the substantive, which happens to be Latin 
 and incorrect at once. It does seem a waste 
 of time to say CJirysantJieimini IcucantJicmiun 
 instead of Whiteweed ; though, if the long 
 scientific name were an incantation to banish 
 the intruder, our farmers would gladly con- 
 sent to adopt it. 
 
 But a great advantage of a reasonable use 
 of the botanical name is, that it does not 
 deceive us. Our primrose is not the English 
 primrose, any more than it was our robin 
 who tucked up the babes in the wood ; our 
 cowslip is not the English cowslip, it is 
 the English marsh-marigold, — Tennyson's 
 marsh-marigold. The pretty name of Azalea 
 means something definite ; but its rural name 
 of Honeysuckle confounds under that name 
 flowers without even an external resemblance, 
 — Azalea, Diervilla, Lonicera, Aquilegia, — 
 just as every bird which sings loud in deep 
 woods is popularly denominated a thrush. 
 The really rustic names of both plants and 
 animals are very few with us, — the different 
 species are many ; and as we come to know 
 them better and love them more, we abso- 
 lutely require some way to distinguish them 
 from their half-sisters and second-cousins. 
 51 
 
April Days 
 
 It is hopeless to try to create new popular 
 epithets, or even to revive those which are 
 thoroughly obsolete. Miss Cooper may 
 strive in vain, with benevolent intent, to 
 christen her favorite spring blossoms ** May- 
 Wings " and '* Gay-Wings," and *' Fringe- 
 Cup " and *' Squirrel-Cup," and '' Cool-Wort" 
 and "Bead-Ruby;" there is no conceivable 
 reason why these should not be the familiar 
 appellations, except the irresistible fact that 
 they are not. It is impossible to create a 
 popular name : one might as well attempt to 
 invent a legend or compose a ballad. Nas- 
 cittir, no7i fit. 
 
 As the spring comes on, and the changing 
 outlines of the elm give daily a new design 
 for a Grecian urn, — its hue first brown 
 with blossoms, then emerald with leaves, — 
 we appreciate the vanishing beauty of the 
 bare boughs. In our favored temperate zone 
 the trees denude themselves each year, like 
 the goddesses before Paris, that we may see 
 which unadorned loveliness is the fairest. 
 Only the unconquerable delicacy of the beech 
 still keeps its soft vestments about it : far into 
 spring, when worn to thin rags and tatters, 
 they cling there still ; and when they fall, the 
 new appear as by magic. It must be owned, 
 52 
 
April Days 
 
 however, that the beech has good reasons for 
 this prudishness, and has hereabouts Httle 
 beauty of figure ; while the elms, maples, 
 chestnuts, walnuts, and even oaks, have not 
 exhausted all their store of charms for us, 
 until we have seen them disrobed. Only 
 yonder magnificent pine-tree, — that pitch- 
 pine, nobler when seen in perfection than 
 white-pine, or Norwegian, or Norfolk-Islander, 
 — that pitch-pine, herself a grove, una nemiiSy 
 holds her unchanging beauty throughout the 
 year, like her half-brother, the ocean, whose 
 voice she shares ; and only marks the flowing 
 of her annual tide of life by the new verdure 
 that yearly submerges all trace of last year's 
 ebb. 
 
 How many lessons of faith and beauty we 
 should lose if there were no winter in our 
 year ! Sometimes In following up a water- 
 course an\ong our hills, in the early spring, 
 one comes to a weird and desolate place, 
 where one huge wild grape-vine has wreathed 
 its ragged arms around a whole thicket and 
 brought it to the ground, — swarming to the 
 tops of hemlocks, clenching a dozen young 
 maples at once and tugging them downward, 
 stretching its wizard black length across the 
 underbrush, into the earth and out again, 
 
April Days 
 
 wrenching up great stones in its blind, aim- 
 less struggle. What a piece of chaos is this ! 
 »Yet come here again, two months hence, and 
 you shall find all this desolation clothed with 
 beauty and with fragrance, one vast bower of 
 soft green leaves and graceful tendrils, while 
 summer birds chirp and flutter amid these 
 sunny arches all the livelong day. 
 
 To the end of April, and often later, one 
 still finds remains of snow-banks in sheltered 
 woods, especially among evergreens ; and this 
 snow, like that upon high mountains, has 
 often become hardened, by the repeated thaw- 
 ing and freezing of the surface, till it is more 
 impenetrable than ice. But the snow that 
 falls during April is usually what Vermonters 
 call " sugar-snow," — falling in the night and 
 just whitening the surface for an hour or two, 
 and taking its name, not so much from its 
 looks as from the fact that it denotes the 
 proper weather for " sugaring," namely, cold 
 nights and warm days. Our saccharine asso- 
 ciations, however, remain so obstinately tropi- 
 cal, that it seems almost impossible for the 
 imagination to locate sugar in New-England 
 trees ; though it is known that not the maple 
 only, but the birch and the walnut even, 
 afford it in appreciable quantities. 
 54 
 
April Days 
 
 Along our maritime rivers the people asso- 
 ciate April, not with ** sugaring," but with 
 '' shadding." The pretty Amelanchier Cana- 
 densis of Gray — the Ajvnia of Whittier's 
 song— is called Shad-bush, or Shad-blow, in 
 Essex County, from its connection with this 
 season ; and there is a bird known as the 
 Shad-spirit, which I take to be identical with 
 the flicker or golden-winged woodpecker, 
 whose note is still held to indicate the first 
 day when the fish ascend the river. Upon 
 such slender wings flits our New-England 
 romance ! 
 
 In April the creative process described by 
 Thales is repeated, and the world is renewed 
 by water. The submerged creatures first feel 
 the touch of spring, and many an equivocal 
 career, beginning in the ponds and brooks, 
 learns later to ignore this obscure beginning, 
 and hops or flutters in the dusty daylight. 
 Early in March, before the first male canker- 
 moth appears on the elm-tree, the whirlwig 
 beetles have begun to play round the broken 
 edges of the ice, and the caddis-worms to 
 crawl beneath it ; and soon come the water- 
 skater {Gerris) and the water-boatman {Noto- 
 nectd). Turtles and newts are in busy motion 
 when the spring-birds are only just arriving. 
 55 
 
April Days 
 
 Those gelatinous masses in yonder wayside 
 pond are the spawn of water-newts or tritons: 
 in the clear, transparent jelly are imbedded, 
 at regular intervals, little blackish dots ; these 
 elongate rapidly, and show symptoms of head 
 and tail curled up in a spherical cell ; the 
 jelly is gradually absorbed for their nourish- 
 ment, until, on some fine morning, each elon- 
 gated dot gives one vigorous wriggle, and 
 claims thenceforward all the privileges of 
 freedom. The final privilege is often that of 
 being suddenly snapped up by a turtle or a 
 snake : for Nature brings forth her creatures 
 liberally, especially the aquatic ones, sacri- 
 fices nine-tenths of them as food for their 
 larger cousins, and reserves only a handful to 
 propagate their race, on the same profuse 
 scale, next season. 
 
 It is surprising, in the midst of our Museums 
 and Scientific Schools, how little we yet know 
 of the common things around us. Our savans 
 still confess their inability to discriminate with 
 certainty the ^g'g or tadpole of a frog from 
 that of a toad ; and it is strange that these 
 hopping creatures, which seem so unlike, 
 should coincide so nearly in their juvenile 
 career, while the tritons and salamanders, 
 which border so closely on each other in 
 
 56 
 
April Days 
 
 their maturer state as sometimes to be hardly- 
 distinguishable, yet choose different methods 
 and different elements for laying their eggs. 
 The eggs of our salamanders, or land-lizards, 
 are deposited beneath the moss on some 
 damp rock, without any gelatinous envelope ; 
 they are but few in number, and the anxious 
 mamma may sometimes be found coiled in a 
 circle around them, like the symbolic serpent 
 of eternity. 
 
 The small number of birds yet present in 
 early April gives a better opportunity for 
 careful study, — more especially if one goes 
 armed with that best of fowling-pieces, a 
 small spy-glass : the best, — since how value- 
 less for purposes of observation is the bleed- 
 ing, gasping, dying body, compared with the 
 fresh and living creature, as it tilts, trembles, 
 and warbles on the bough before you ! Ob- 
 serve that robin in the oak-tree's top : as he 
 sits and sings, every one of the dozen differ- 
 ent notes which he flings down to you is ac- 
 companied by a separate flirt and flutter of 
 his whole body, and, as Thoreau says of the 
 squirrel, " each movement seems to imply a 
 spectator." Study that song-sparrow: why 
 is it that he always goes so ragged in spring, 
 and the bluebird so neat? Is it that the song- 
 57 
 
April Days 
 
 sparrow is a wild artist, absorbed in the com- 
 position of his lay, and oblivious of ordinary 
 proprieties, while the sjiiooth bluebird and 
 his ash-colored mate cultivate their delicate 
 warble only as a domestic accomplishment, 
 and are always nicely dressed before sitting 
 down at the piano? Then how exciting is 
 the gradual arrival of the birds in their sum- 
 mer plumage ! To watch it is like sitting at 
 the window on Easter Sunday to observe the 
 new bonnets. Yonder, in that clump of alders 
 by the brook, is the delicious jargoning of the 
 first flock of yellow-birds ; there are the little 
 gentlemen in black and yellow, and the little 
 ladies in olive-brown ; '' sweet, sweet, sweet," 
 is the only word they say, and often they will 
 so lower their ceaseless warble that, though 
 almost within reach, the minstrels seem far 
 distant. There is the very earliest cat-bird, 
 mimicking the bobolink before the bobolink 
 has come : what is the history of his song, 
 then? Is it a reminiscence of last year, or 
 has the little coquette been practising it all 
 winter, in some gay Southern society, where 
 cat-birds and bobolinks grow intimate, just as 
 Southern fashionables from different States 
 may meet and sing duets at Saratoga? There 
 sounds the sweet, low, long-continued trill of 
 S8 
 
April Days 
 
 the little hair-bird, or chipping-sparrow, a sug- 
 gestion of insect sounds in sultry summer: 
 by and by we shall sometimes hear that same 
 delicate rhythm burst the silence of the June 
 midnights, and then, ceasing, make stillness 
 more still. Now watch that woodpecker, 
 roving in ceaseless search, travelling over 
 fifty trees in an hour, running from top to 
 bottom of some small sycamore, pecking at 
 every crevice, pausing to dot a dozen inex- 
 plicable holes in a row upon an apple-tree, 
 but never once intermitting the low, queru- 
 lous murmur of housekeeping anxiety. Some- 
 times she stops to hammer with all her little 
 life at some tough piece of bark, strikes 
 harder and harder blows, throws herself back 
 at last, flapping her wings furiously as she 
 brings down her whole strength again upon 
 it; finally it yields, and grub after grub goes 
 down her throat, till she whets her beak after 
 the meal as a wild beast licks its claws, and is 
 off on her pressing business once more. 
 
 It is no wonder that there is so little sub- 
 stantial enjoyment of Nature in the commun- 
 ity, when we feed children on grammars and 
 dictionaries only, and take no pains to train 
 them to see that which is before their eyes. 
 The mass of the community have " summered 
 59 
 
April Days 
 
 and wintered " the universe pretty regularly, 
 one would think, for a good many years ; and 
 yet nine persons out of ten in the town or 
 city, and two out of three even in the country, 
 seriously suppose, for instance, that the buds 
 upon trees are formed in the spring; they 
 have had them within sight all winter, and 
 never seen them. So people think, in good 
 faith, that a plant grows at the base of the 
 stem, instead of at the top : that is, if they 
 see a young sapling in which there is a crotch 
 at five feet from the ground, they expect to 
 see it ten feet from the ground by and by, — 
 confounding the growth of a tree with that of 
 a man or animal. But perhaps the best of 
 us could hardly bear the system of tests un- 
 consciously laid down by a small child of my 
 acquaintance. The boy's father, a college- 
 bred man, had early chosen the better part, 
 and employed his fine faculties in rearing 
 laurels in his own beautiful nursery-gardens, 
 instead of in the more arid soil of court-rooms 
 or state-houses. Of course the young human 
 scion knew the flowers by name before he 
 knew his letters, and used their symbols more 
 readily; and after he got the command of 
 both, he was one day asked by his younger 
 brother what the word "idiot" meant, — for 
 60 
 
April Days 
 
 somebody in the parlor had been saying that 
 somebody else was an idiot. " Don't you 
 know? " quoth Ben, in his sweet voice: " an 
 idiot is a person who does n't know an arbor- 
 vitse from a pine, — he doesn't know any- 
 thing." When Ben grows up to maturity, 
 bearing such terrible definitions in his un- 
 shrinking hands, which of us will be safe? 
 
 The softer aspects of Nature, especially, re- 
 quire time and culture before man can enjoy 
 them. To rude races her processes bring 
 only terror, which is very slowly outgrown. 
 Humboldt has best exhibited the scantiness 
 of finer natural perceptions in Greek and 
 Roman literature, in spite of the grand oceanic 
 rhythm of Homer, and the delicate water- 
 coloring of the Greek Anthology and of 
 Horace. The Oriental and the Norse sacred 
 books are full of fresh and beautiful allusions ; 
 but the Greek saw in Nature only a frame- 
 work for Art, and the Roman only a camping- 
 ground for men. Even Virgil describes the 
 grotto of ^neas merely as a '' black grove " 
 with " horrid shade," — '' Horrenti atrum 
 nemus imminet ttnibra!' Wordsworth points 
 out, that, even in English literature, the 
 '^Windsor Forest" of Anne, Countess of 
 Winchelsea, was the first poem which repre- 
 6i 
 
April Days 
 
 sented Nature as a thing to be consciously 
 enjoyed ; and as she was almost the first 
 English poetess, we might be tempted to 
 think that we owe this appreciation, like some 
 other good things, to the participation of 
 woman in literature. But, on the other hand, 
 it must be remembered that the voluminous 
 Duchess of Newcastle, in her *' Ode on Mel- 
 ancholy," describes . among the symbols of 
 hopeless gloom ** the still moonshine night " 
 and '* a mill where rushing waters run about," 
 — the sweetest natural images. In our own 
 country, the early explorers seemed to find 
 only horror in its woods and waterfalls. 
 Josselyn, in 1672, could only describe the 
 summer splendor of the White Mountain re- 
 gion as " dauntingly terrible, being full of 
 rocky hills, as thick as molehills in a meadow, 
 and full of infinite thick woods." Father 
 Hennepin spoke of Niagara, in the narrative 
 still quoted in the guide-books, as a " fright- 
 ful cataract; " and honest John Adams could 
 find no better name than " horrid chasm " for 
 the picturesque gulf at Egg Rock, where he 
 first saw the sea-anemone. 
 
 But we are lingering too long, perhaps, 
 with this sweet April of smiles and tears. It 
 needs only to add, that all her traditions are 
 62 
 
April Days 
 
 beautiful. Ovid says well, that she was not 
 named from aperire, to open, as some have 
 thought, but from Aphrodite, goddess of 
 beauty. April holds Easter-time, St. George's 
 Day, and the Eve of St. Mark's. She has 
 not, like her sister May in Germany, been 
 transformed to a verb and made a synonyme 
 for joy, — " Deine Seele maiet den truben 
 Herbst,'' — but April was believed in early 
 ages to have been the birth-time of the world. 
 According to the Venerable Bede, the point 
 was first accurately determined at a council 
 held at Jerusalem about A. D. 200, when, 
 after much profound discussion, it was finally 
 decided that the world's birthday occurred on 
 Sunday, April 8th, — that is, at the vernal 
 equinox and the full moon. But April is cer- 
 tainly the birth-time of the season, at least, 
 if not of the planet. Its festivals are older 
 than Christianity, older than the memory of 
 man. No sad associations cling to it, as to 
 the month of June, in which month, says 
 William of Malmesbury, kings are wont to 
 go to war, — '' Qiiando solent reges ad anna 
 procedere^' — but it contains the Holy Week, 
 and it is the Holy Month. And in April 
 Shakespeare was born, and in April he died. 
 
 63 
 
Ill 
 
 WATER-LILIES 
 
Ill 
 
 WATER-LILIES 
 
 THE inconstant April mornings drop 
 showers or sunbeams over the glisten- 
 ing lake, while far beneath its surface a murky 
 mass disengages itself from the muddy bottom, 
 and rises slowly through the waves. The 
 tasselled alder-branches droop above it; the 
 last year's blackbird's nest swings over it in 
 the grape-vine ; the newly opened Hepaticas 
 and Epigaeas on the neighboring bank peer 
 down modestly to look for it; the water- 
 skater (Gerris) pauses on the surface near it, 
 casting on the shallow bottom the odd shadow 
 of his feet, like three pairs of boxing-gloves ; 
 the Notonecta, or water-boatman, rows round 
 and round it, sometimes on his breast, some- 
 times on his back ; queer caddis-worms trail 
 their self-made homesteads of leaves or twigs 
 beside it; the Dytiscus, dor-bug of the water, 
 blunders clumsily against it; the tadpole 
 wriggles his stupid way to it, and rests upon 
 it, meditating of future frogdom ; the passing 
 67 
 
Water- Lilies 
 
 wild-duck dives and nibbles at it ; the mink 
 and muskrat brush it with their soft fur ; the 
 spotted turtle slides over it ; the slow larvae 
 of gauzy dragon-flies cHng sleepily to its sides 
 and await their change : all these fair or un- 
 couth creatures feel, through the dim waves, 
 the blessed longing of spring ; and yet not 
 one of them dreams that within that murky 
 mass there lies a treasure too white and 
 beautiful to be yet intrusted to the waves, and 
 that for many a day the bud must yearn 
 toward the surface, before, aspiring above 
 it, as mortals to heaven, it meets the sun 
 shine with the answering beauty of the VVater- 
 Lily. 
 
 Days and weeks have passed away ; the 
 wild-duck has flown onward, to dive for his 
 luncheon in some remoter lake ; the tadpoles 
 have made themselves legs, with which they 
 have vanished ; the caddis-worms have sealed 
 themselves up in their cylinders, and emerged 
 again as winged insects ; the dragon-flies have 
 crawled up the water-reeds, and, clinging with 
 heads upturned, have undergone the change 
 which symbolizes immortality; the world is 
 transformed from spring to summer; the lily- 
 buds are opened into glossy leaf and radiant 
 flower, and we have come for the harvest. 
 
 6d> 
 
Water-Lilies 
 
 We visitors lodged, last night, in the .old 
 English phrase, '* at the sign of the Oak and 
 Star." Wishing not, indeed, like the ancient 
 magicians, to gather magic berry and bud 
 before sunrise, but at least to see these treas- 
 ures of the lake in their morning hour, we 
 camped overnight on a little island, which 
 one tall tree almost covers with its branches, 
 while a dense undergrowth of young chest- 
 nuts and birches fills all the intervening space,* 
 touching the water all around the circular, 
 shelving shore. The day had been hot, but 
 the night was cool, and we kindled a gypsy 
 fire of twigs, less for warmth than for society. 
 The first gleam made the dark, lonely islet 
 into a cheering home, turned the protecting 
 tree to a starlit roof, and the chestnut-sprays 
 to illuminated walls. To us, lying beneath 
 their shelter, every fresh flickering of the fire 
 kindled the leaves into brightness and ban- 
 ished into dark interstices the lake and sky; 
 then the fire died into embers, the leaves faded 
 into solid darkness in their turn, and water 
 and heavens showed light and close and near, 
 until fresh twigs caught fire and the blaze 
 came up again. Rising to look forth at inter- 
 vals, during the peaceful hours, — for it is the 
 worst feature of a night out-doors, that sleep- 
 
 69 
 
Water-Lilies 
 
 ing seems such a waste of time, — we watched 
 the hilly and wooded shores of the lake sink 
 into gloom and glimmer into dawn again, 
 amid the low plash of waters and the noises 
 of the night. 
 
 Precisely at half-past three, a song-sparrow 
 above our heads gave one liquid trill, so in- 
 expressibly sudden and delicious, that it 
 seemed to set to music every atom of fresh- 
 ness and fragrance that Nature held ; then 
 the spell was broken, and the whole shore 
 and lake were vocal with song. Joining in 
 this jubilee of morning, we were early in mo- 
 tion ; bathing and breakfast, though they 
 seemed indisputably in accordance with the 
 instincts of the Universe, yet did not detain 
 us long, and we were promptly on our way 
 to Lily Pond. Will the reader join us? 
 
 It is one of those summer days when a veil 
 of mist gradually burns away before the intense 
 sunshine, and the sultry morning only plays 
 at coolness, and that with its earliest visitors 
 alone. But we are before the sunlight, 
 though not before the sunrise, and can watch 
 "the pretty game of alternating mist and shine. 
 Stray gleams of glory lend their trailing mag- 
 nificence to the tops of chestnut-trees, floating 
 vapors raise the outlines of the hills and make 
 70 
 
Water- Lilies 
 
 mystery of the wooded islands, and, as we 
 glide through the placid water, we can sing, 
 with the Chorus in the '' Ion " of Euripides, 
 ** O immense and brilliant air, resound with 
 our cries of joy ! " 
 
 Almost every town has its Lily Pond, dear 
 to boys and maidens, and partially equalizing, 
 by its annual delights, the presence or absence 
 of other geographical advantages. Ours is 
 accessible from the larger lake only by taking 
 the skiff over a narrow embankment, which 
 protects our fairy-land by its presence, and 
 eight distant factories by its dam. Once be- 
 yond it, we are in a realm of dark Lethean 
 water, utterly unlike the sunny depths of the 
 main lake. Hither the water-lilies have re- 
 treated, to a domain of their own. In the 
 bosom of these shallow waves, there stand 
 hundreds of submerged and dismasted roots, 
 still upright, spreading their vast, uncouth 
 limbs like enormous spiders beneath the sur- 
 face. They are remnants of border wars with 
 the axe, vegetable Witheringtons, still fighting 
 on their stumps, but gradually sinking into 
 the soft ooze, and ready, perhaps, when a 
 score of centuries has piled two more strata 
 of similar remains in mud above them, to 
 furnish foundations for a newer New Orleans ; 
 71 
 
Water-Lilies 
 
 that city having been lately discovered to be 
 thus supported. 
 
 The present decline in the manufacturing 
 business is clear revenue to the water-lilies, 
 and these ponds are higher than usual, be- 
 cause the idle mills do not draw them off. 
 But we may notice, in observing the shores, 
 that peculiar charm of water, that, whether 
 its quantity be greater or less, its grace is the 
 same ; it makes its own boundary in lake or 
 river, and where its edge is, there seems the 
 natural and permanent margin. And the 
 same natural fitness, without reference to 
 mere quantity, extends to its flowery children. 
 Before us lie islands and continents of lilies, 
 acres of charms, whole, vast, unbroken sur- 
 faces of stainless whiteness. And yet, as we 
 approach them, every island cup that floats 
 in lonely dignity, apart from the multitude, 
 appears perfect in itself, couched in white 
 expanded perfection, its reflection taking a 
 faint glory of pink that is scarcely perceptible 
 in the flower. As we glide gently among 
 them, the air grows fragrant, and a stray 
 breeze flaps the leaves, as if to welcome us. 
 Each floating flower becomes suddenly a ship 
 at anchor, or rather seems beating up against 
 the summer wind in a regatta of blossoms, 
 72 
 
Water- Lilies 
 
 Early as it is in the day, the greater part 
 of the flowers are already expanded. Indeed, 
 that experience of Thoreau's, of watching 
 them open in the first sunbeams, rank by 
 rank, is not easily obtained, unless perhaps 
 in a narrow stream, where the beautiful 
 slumberers are more regularly marshalled. 
 In our lake, at least, they open irregularly, 
 though rapidly. But, this morning, many 
 linger as buds, while others peer up, in half- 
 expanded beauty, beneath the lifted leaves, 
 frolicsome as Pucks or baby-nymphs. As 
 you raise the leaf, in such cases, it is impos- 
 sible not to imagine that a pair of tiny hands 
 have upheld it, and that the pretty head will 
 dip down again, and disappear. Others, 
 again, have expanded all but the inmost pair 
 of white petals, and these spring apart at the 
 first touch of the finger on the stem. Some 
 spread vast vases of fragrance, six or seven 
 inches in diameter, while others are small 
 and delicate, with petals like fine lace-work. 
 Smaller still, we sometimes pass a flotilla of 
 infant leaves, an inch in diameter. All these 
 grow from the dark water, — and the blacker 
 it is, the fairer their whiteness shows. But 
 your eye follows the stem often vainly into 
 those sombre depths, and vainly seeks to be- 
 73 
 
Water-Lilies 
 
 hold Sabrina fair, sitting with her twisted 
 braids of Hhes, beneath the glassy, cool, but 
 not translucent wave. Do not start, when, in 
 such an effort, only your ow^n dreamy face 
 looks back upon you, beyond the gunwale of 
 the reflected boat, and you find that you float 
 double — self and shadow. 
 
 Let us rest our paddles, and look round us, 
 while the idle motion sways our light skiff on- 
 ward, now half embayed among the lily-pads, 
 now lazily gliding over intervening gulfs. 
 There is a great deal going on in these waters 
 and their fringing woods and meadows. All 
 the summer long the pond is bordered with 
 successive walls of flowers. In early spring 
 emerge the yellow catkins of the swamp- 
 willow, first ; then the long tassels of the 
 graceful alders expand and droop, till they 
 weep their yellow dust upon the water; 
 then come the birch-blossoms, more tardily ; 
 then the downy leaves and white clusters of 
 the medlar or shad-bush {AuuiajicJiicr Cana- 
 densis) ; these dropping, the roseate chalices 
 of the mountain-laurel open ; as they fade 
 into melancholy brown, the sweet Azalea 
 uncloses ; and before its last honeyed blossom 
 has trailed down, dying, from the stem, the 
 more fragrant Clethra starts out above, the 
 74 
 
Water-Lilies 
 
 button-bush thrusts forth its merry face amid 
 wild roses, and the Clematis waves its sprays 
 of beauty. Mingled with these grow, lower, 
 the spiraeas, white and pink, yellow touch- 
 me-not, fresh white arrowhead, bright blue 
 vervain and skull-cap, dull snake-head, gay 
 monkey-flower, coarse eupatoriums, milk- 
 weeds, golden-rods, asters, thistles, and a host 
 beside. Beneath, the brilliant scarlet cardinal- 
 flower begins to palisade the moist shores ; and 
 after its superb reflection has passed away 
 from the waters, the grotesque witch-hazel 
 flares out its narrow yellow petals amidst the 
 October leaves, and so ends the floral year. 
 There is not a week during all these months 
 when one cannot stand in the boat and 
 wreathe garlands of blossoms from the 
 shores. 
 
 These all crowd around the brink, and 
 watch, day and night, the opening and clos- 
 ing of the water-liHes. Meanwhile, upon the 
 waters, our queen keeps her chosen court, 
 nor can one of these mere land-loving blos- 
 soms touch the hem of her garment. In 
 truth, she bears no sister near her throne. 
 There is but this one species among us, 
 Nymphcea odorata, the beautiful little rose- 
 colored iV^;;////^^^ i-^;/^///;^^(^, which still adorns 
 75 
 
Water-Lilies 
 
 the Botanic Gardens, being merely an occa- 
 sional variety. She has, indeed, an EngHsh 
 half-sister, Nymphcea alba, less beautiful, less 
 fragrant, but keeping more fashionable hours, 
 — not opening (according to Linnaeus) till 
 seven, nor closing till four. And ^he has a 
 humble cousin, the yellow Nuphar, who 
 keeps commonly aloof, as becomes a poor 
 relation, though created from the self-same 
 mud, — a fact which Hawthorne has beauti- 
 fully moralized. The prouder Nelumbium, 
 a second-cousin, lineal descendant of the 
 sacred bean of Pythagoras, has fallen to an 
 obscurer position, but dwells, like a sturdy 
 democrat, in the Y^x West. 
 
 Yet, undisturbed, the water-lily reigns on, 
 with her retinue around her. The tall pick- 
 erel-weed (Pontederia) is her gentleman- 
 usher, gorgeous in blue and gold through 
 July, somewhat rusty in August. The water- 
 shield (Hydropeltis) is chief maid-of-honor ; 
 a high-born lady she, not without royal blood, 
 indeed, but with rather a bend sinister; not 
 precisely beautiful, but very fastidious ; en- 
 cased over her whole person with a gelatinous 
 covering, literally a starched duenna. Some- 
 times she is suspected of conspiring to drive 
 her mistress from the throne; for we have 
 
 76 
 
Water-Lilies 
 
 observed certain slow watercourses where the 
 leaves of the water-lily have been almost 
 wholly replaced, in a series of years, by the 
 similar, but smaller, leaves of the water- 
 shield. More rarely seen is the slender 
 Utricularia, a dainty maiden, whose Hght 
 feet scarce touch the water, — with the still 
 more delicate floating white Water-Ranuncu- 
 lus, and the shy Villarsia, whose submerged 
 flowers merely peep one day above the 
 surface and then close again forever. Then 
 there are many humbler attendants, Potamo- 
 getons or pond-weeds. And here float little 
 emissaries from the dominions of land ; for 
 the fallen florets of the Viburnum drift among 
 the lily-pads, with mast-like stamens erect, 
 sprinkling the water with a strange beauty, 
 and cheating us with the promise of a new 
 aquatic flower. 
 
 These arc the still life of this sequestered 
 nook ; but it is in fact a crowded thorough- 
 fare. No tropic jungle more swarms with 
 busy existence than these midsummer waters 
 and their bushy banks. The warm and hum- 
 ming air is filled with insect sounds, ranging 
 from the murmur of invisible gnats and 
 midges to the impetuous whirring of the 
 great Libellulse, large almost as swallows, 
 77 
 
Water- Lilies 
 
 and hawking high in air for their food. Swift 
 butterflies glance by, moths flutter, flies buzz, 
 grasshoppers and katydids pipe their shrill 
 notes, sharp as the edges of the sunbeams. 
 Busy bees go humming past, straight as ar- 
 rows, express-freight-trains from one blos- 
 soming copse to another. Showy wasps of 
 many species fume uselessly about, in gallant 
 uniforms, wasting an immense deal of unne- 
 cessary anger on the sultry universe. Grace- 
 ful, stingless Sphexes and Ichneumon-flies 
 emulate their bustle, without their weapons. 
 Delicate lady-birds come and go to the milk- 
 weeds, spotted almost as regularly as if 
 Nature had decided to number the species, 
 like policemen or hack-drivers, from one to 
 twenty. Elegant little Leptura^ fly with them, 
 so gay and airy they hardly seem like beetles. 
 PhryganesE (once caddis-worms), lacc-flies, 
 and long-tailed Ephemera: flutter more heavily 
 by. On the large aldcr-flowers clings the 
 superb Dcsnioccrus palliatus, beautiful as a 
 tropical insect, with his steel-blue armor and 
 his golden cloak {palliuni) above his shoul- 
 ders, grandest knight on this Field of the 
 Cloth of Gold. The countless fireflies which 
 spangled the evening mist now only crawl 
 sleepily, daylight creatures, with the lustre 
 
 78 
 
Water- Lilies 
 
 buried in their milky bodies. More wholly 
 children of night, the soft, luxurious Sphinxes 
 (or hawk-moths) come not here ; fine ladies 
 of the insect world, their home is among 
 gardens and greenhouses, late and languid 
 by day, but all night long upon the wing, 
 dancing in the air with unwearied muscles 
 till long past midnight, and supping on 
 honey at last. They come not; but the 
 nobler butterflies soar above us, stoop a mo- 
 ment to the water, and then with a few lazy 
 wavings of their sumptuous wings float far 
 over the oak-trees to the woods they love. 
 
 All these hover near the water-lily ; but its 
 special parasites are an enamelled beetle 
 {Donacia metallica) which keeps house per- 
 manently in the flower, and a few smaller ones 
 which tenant the surface of the leaves, — 
 larva, pupa, and perfect insect, forty feeding 
 like one, and each leading its whole earthly 
 career on this floating island of perishable 
 verdure. The "beautiful blue damsel-flies" 
 alight also in multitudes among them, so fear- 
 less that they perch with equal readiness on 
 our boat or paddle, and so various that two 
 adjacent ponds will sometimes be haunted by 
 two distinct sets of species. In the water, 
 among the leaves, little shining whirlwigs 
 79 
 
Water- Lilies 
 
 wheel round and round, fifty joining in the 
 dance, till, at the slightest alarm, they whirl 
 away to some safer ball-room, and renew the 
 merriment. On every floating log, as we ap- 
 proach it, there is a convention of turtles, 
 sitting in calm debate, like mailed barons, till, 
 as we draw near, they plump into the water, 
 and paddle away for some subaqueous Run- 
 nymede. Beneath, the shy and stately pick- 
 erel vanishes at a glance, shoals of minnows 
 glide, black and bearded pouts frisk aimlessly, 
 soft water-newts hang poised without motion, 
 and slender pickerel-frogs cease occasionally 
 their submerged croaking, and, darting to 
 the surface, with swift vertical strokes, gulp 
 a mouthful of fresh air, and down again to 
 renew the moist soliloquy. 
 
 Time would fail us to tell of the feathered 
 life around us, — the blackbirds that build 
 securely in these thickets, the stray swallows 
 that dip their wings in the quiet waters, and 
 the kingfishers that still bring, as the ancients 
 fabled, halcyon days. Yonder stands, against 
 the shore, a bittern, motionless in that wreath 
 of mist which makes his long-logged person 
 almost as dim as his far-off booming by 
 night. There poises a hawk, before sweep- 
 ing down to some chosen bough in the dense 
 80 
 
Water- Lilies 
 
 forest; and there flies a pair of blue-jays, 
 screaming, from tree to tree. As for wild 
 quadrupeds, the race is almost passed away. 
 Far to the north, indeed, the great moose 
 still browses on the lily-pads, and the shy 
 beaver nibbles them ; but here the few linger- 
 ing four-footed creatures only haunt, but do 
 not graze upon, these floating pastures. Eyes 
 more favored than ours may yet chance to 
 spy an otter in this still place ; there by the 
 shore are the small footprints of a mink; 
 that dark thing disappearing in the waters 
 yonder, a soft mass of drowned fur, is a 
 muskrat, or " musquash." Later in the sea- 
 son, a mound of earth will be his winter 
 dwelling-place ; and these myriad muscle- 
 shells at the water's edge are the remnant 
 of his banquets, — once banquets for the 
 Indians, too. 
 
 But we must return to our lilies. There is 
 no sense of wealth like floating in this archi- 
 pelago of white and green. The emotions of 
 avarice become almost demoralizing. Every 
 flower bears a fragrant California in its bo- 
 som, and you feel impoverished at the thought 
 of leaving one behind. Then, after the first 
 half-hour of eager grasping, one becomes 
 fastidious, rather avoids those on which the 
 6 8i 
 
Water- Lilies 
 
 wasps and flies have alighted, and seeks only 
 the stainless. But handle them tenderly, as 
 if you loved them. Do not grasp at the 
 open flower as if it were a peony or a holly- 
 hock, for then it will come ofl", stalkless, in 
 your hand, and you will cast it blighted upon 
 the water ; but coil your thumb and second 
 finger affectionately around it, press the ex- 
 tended forefinger firmly to the stem below, 
 and, with one steady pull, you will secure a 
 long and delicate stalk, fit to twine around 
 the graceful head of your beloved, as the 
 Hindoo goddess of beauty encircled with a 
 Lotus the brow of Rama. 
 
 Consider the lilies. All over our rural 
 watercourses, at midsummer, float these cups 
 of snow. They are Nature's symbols of cool- 
 ness. They suggest to us the white garments 
 of their Oriental worshippers. They come 
 with the white roses, and prepare the way for 
 the white lilies of the garden. The white doe 
 of Rylstone and Andrew Marvell's fawn might 
 fitly bathe amid their beauties. Yonder steep 
 bank slopes down to the lake-side, one solid 
 mass of pale pink laurel, but, once upon the 
 water, a purer tint prevails. The pink fades 
 into a lingering flush, and the white creature 
 floats peerless, set in green without and gold 
 82 
 
Water-Lilies 
 
 within. That bright circle of stamens is the 
 very ring with which Doges once wedded the 
 Adriatic ; Venice has lost it, but it dropped 
 into the water-lily's bosom, and there it rests 
 forever. So perfect in form, so redundant in 
 beauty, so delicate, so spotless, so fragrant, — 
 what presumptuous lover ever dared, in his 
 most enamoured hour, to liken his mistress to 
 a water-lily? No human Blanche or LiHan 
 was ever so fair as that. 
 
 The water-lily comes of an ancient and 
 sacred family of white-robed priests. They 
 assisted at the most momentous religious 
 ceremonies, from the beginning of recorded 
 time. The Egyptian Lotus was a sacred 
 plant; it was dedicated to Harpocrates and 
 to the god Nofr Atmoo, — Nofr meaning 
 goody whence the name of our yellow lily, 
 Nuphar. But the true Egyptian flower was 
 NympJicea Lotus, though NympJicea coerulea, 
 Moore's " blue water-lilies," can be traced on 
 the sculptures also. It was cultivated in tanks 
 in the gardens ; it was the chief material for 
 festal wreaths ; a single bud hung over the 
 forehead of many a queenly dame ; and the 
 sculptures represent the weary flowers as 
 dropping from the heated hands of belles, in 
 the later hours of the feast. Rock softly on 
 
 83 
 
Water- Lilies 
 
 the waters, fair lilies ! your Eastern kindred 
 have rocked on the stormier bosom of Cleo- 
 patra. The Egyptian Lotus was, moreover, 
 the emblem of the sacred Nile, — as the 
 Hindoo species, of the sacred Ganges; and 
 each was held the symbol of the creation of 
 the world from the waters. The sacred bull 
 Apis was wreathed with its garlands; there 
 were niches for water, to place it among 
 tombs ; it was carved in the capitals of 
 columns ; it was represented on plates and 
 vases ; the sculptures show it in many sacred 
 uses, even as a burnt-offering; Isis holds it; 
 and the god Nilus still binds a wreath of 
 water-lilies around the throne of Memnon. 
 
 From Egypt the Lotus was carried to As- 
 syria, and Layard found it among fir-cones 
 and honeysuckles on the later sculptures of 
 Nineveh. The Greeks dedicated it to the 
 nymphs, whence the name NympJicea. Nor 
 did the Romans disregard it, though the 
 Lotus to which Ovid's nymph Lotis was 
 changed, servato nomine, was a tree, and not 
 a flower. Still different a thing was the en- 
 chanted stem of the Lotus-eaters of Herodo- 
 tus, which prosaic botanists have reduced 
 to the ZizypJins Lotus found by Mungo Park, 
 translating also the yellow Lotus-dust into 
 84 
 
Water-Lilies 
 
 a mere " farina, tasting like sweet ginger- 
 bread." 
 
 But in the Lotus of Hindostan we find our 
 flower again, and the Oriental sacred books 
 are cool with water-lilies. Open the Vishnu 
 Purana at any page, and it is a Sortes Liliance, 
 The orb of the earth is Lotus-shaped, and is 
 upborne by the tusks of Vesava, as if he had 
 been sporting in a lake where the leaves and 
 blossoms float. Brahma, first incarnation of 
 Vishnu, creator of the world, was born from 
 a Lotus ; so was Sri or Lakshmu, the Hindoo 
 Venus, goddess of beauty and prosperity, 
 protectress of womanhood, whose worship 
 guards the house from all danger. *' Seated 
 on a full-blown Lotus, and holding a Lotus 
 in her hand, the goddess Sri, radiant with 
 beauty, rose from the waves." The Lotus is 
 the chief ornament of the subterranean Eden, 
 Patala, and the holy mountain Meru is 
 thought to be shaped like its seed-vessel, 
 larger at summit than at base. When the 
 heavenly Urvasi fled from her earthly spouse, 
 Puruvavas, he found her sporting with four 
 nymphs of heaven, in a lake beautified with 
 the Lotus. When the virtuous Prahlada was 
 burned at the stake, he cried to his cruel 
 father, *' The fire burneth me not, and all 
 8s 
 
Water- Lilies 
 
 around I behold the face of the sky, cool and 
 fragrant with beds of Lotus-flowers ! " Above 
 all, the graceful history of the transformations 
 of Krishna is everywhere hung with these 
 fresh chaplets. Every successive maiden 
 whom the deity wooes is Lotus-eyed, Lotus- 
 mouthed, or Lotus-cheeked, and the youthful 
 hero wears always a Lotus-wreath. Also 
 " the clear sky was bright with the autumnal 
 moon, and the air fragrant with the perfume 
 of the wild water-lily, in whose buds the 
 clustering bees were murmuring their song." 
 
 Elsewhere we find fuller details. *' In the 
 primordial state of the world, the rudimentary 
 universe, submerged in water, reposed on the 
 bosom of the Eternal. Brahma, the architect 
 of the world, poised on a Lotus-leaf, floated 
 upon the waters, and all that he was able to 
 discern with his eight eyes was water and 
 darkness. Amid scenes so ungenial and dis- 
 mal, the god sank into a profound reverie, 
 when he thus soliloquized: 'Who am I? 
 Whence am I ? ' In this state of abstraction 
 Brahma continued during the period of a 
 century and a half of the gods, without ap- 
 parent benefit or a solution of his inquiries, — 
 a circumstance which caused him great un- 
 easiness of mind." It is a comfort, however, 
 86 
 
Water-Lilies 
 
 to know that subsequently a voice came to 
 him, on which he rose, " seated himself upon 
 the Lotus in an attitude of contemplation, 
 and reflected upon the Eternal, who soon 
 appeared to him in the form of a man with a 
 thousand heads," — a questionable exchange 
 for his Lotus-solitude. 
 
 This is Brahminism ; but the other great 
 form of Oriental religion has carried the same 
 fair symbol with it. One of the Bibles of the 
 Buddhists is named '* The White Lotus of the 
 Good Law." A pious Nepaulese bowed in 
 reverence before a vase of lilies which per- 
 fumed the study of Sir William Jones. At 
 sunset in Thibet, the French missionaries tell 
 us, every inhabitant of every village pros- 
 trates himself in the public square, and the 
 holy invocation, " Oh, the gem in the Lotus ! " 
 goes murmuring over hill and valley, like the 
 sound of many bees. It is no unmeaning 
 phrase, but an utterance of ardent desire to 
 be absorbed into that Brahma whose em- 
 blem is the sacred flower. This mystic for- 
 mula or " mani " is imprinted on the pavement 
 of the streets, it floats on flags from the 
 temples, and the wealthy Buddhists maintain 
 sculptor-missionaries, Old Mortalities of the 
 water-lily, who, wandering to distant lands, 
 
 87 
 
Water-Lilles 
 
 carve the blessed words upon cliff and 
 stone. 
 
 Having got thus far into Orientalism, we 
 can hardly expect to get out again without 
 some slight entanglement in philology. Lily- 
 pads. Wh^ncQ pads? No other leaf is iden- 
 tified with that singular monosyllable. Has 
 our floating Lotus-leaf any connection with 
 padding, or with a footpad ? with the ambling 
 pad of an abbot, or a paddle, or a paddock, 
 or a padlock? with many-domed Padua 
 proud, or with St. Patrick? Is the name 
 derived from the Anglo-Saxon paad or pet- 
 thian, or the Greek Trareo)? The etymol- 
 ogists are silent; but was there ever a 
 philological trouble for which the Sanscrit 
 could not afford at least a conjectural cure? 
 A dictionary of that venerable tongue is an 
 ostrich's stomach, which can crack the hard- 
 est etymological nut. The Sanscrit name for 
 the Lotus is simply Padina. The learned 
 Brahmins call the Egyptian deities Padma 
 Devi, or Lotus-Gods; the second of the 
 eighteen Hindoo Puranas is styled the Padma 
 Purana, because it treats of the " epoch when 
 the world was a golden Lotus ; " and the 
 sacred incantation which goes murmuring 
 through Thibet is **^0m mani padme houm." 
 
Water- Lilies 
 
 It would be singular, if upon these delicate 
 floating leaves a fragment of our earliest ver- 
 nacular has been borne down to us, so that 
 here the school-boy is more learned than 'the 
 philologists. 
 
 This lets us down easily to the more famil- 
 iar uses of this plant divine. By the Nile, in 
 early days, the w^ater-lily was good not merely 
 for devotion, but for diet. " From the seeds 
 of the Lotus," said Pliny, " the Egyptians 
 make bread." The Hindoos still eat the 
 seeds, roasted in sand ; also the stalks and 
 roots. In South America, from the seeds of 
 the Victoria {^Nymphcea Victoria, now Victoria 
 Regia) a farina is made, preferred to that of 
 the finest wheat, — Bonpland even suggesting 
 to our reluctant imagination Victoria-pies. 
 But the European species are used, so far as 
 is reported, only in dyeing, and as food (if 
 the truth be told) of swine. Our own water- 
 lily is rather more powerful in its uses ; the 
 root contains tannin and gallic acid, and a 
 decoction of it " gives a black precipitate, 
 with sulphate of iron." It graciously con- 
 sents to become an astringent and a styptic, 
 and a poultice, and, banished from all other 
 temples, still lingers in those of ^Esculapius. 
 
 The botanist also finds his special satisfac- 
 89 
 
Water-Lilies 
 
 tions in the flower. It has some strange 
 peculiarities of structure. So loose is the 
 internal distribution of its tissues, that it was 
 for some time held doubtful to which of the 
 two great vegetable divisions, exogenous or 
 endogenous, it belonged. Its petals, more- 
 over, furnish the best example of the gradual 
 transition of petals into stamens, — illus- 
 trating that wonderful law of identity which 
 is the great discovery of modern science. 
 Every child knows this peculiarity of the 
 water-lily, but the extent of it seems to vary 
 with season and locality, and sometimes one 
 finds a succession of flowers almost entirely 
 free from this confusion of organs. 
 
 The reader may not care to learn that the 
 order of Nymphaeaceae " differs from Ranun- 
 culaceae in the consolidation of its carpels, 
 from Papaveraceae in the placentation not 
 being parietal, and from Nelumbiaceae in the 
 want of a large truncated disc containing 
 monospermous achenia ; " but they may like 
 to know that the water-lily has relations on 
 land, in all gradations of society, from poppy 
 to magnolia, and yet does not conform its 
 habits precisely to those of any of them. Its 
 great black roots, sometimes as large as a 
 man's arm, form a network at the bottom of 
 90 
 
Water-Lilles 
 
 the water. Its stem floats, an airy four-celled 
 tube, adapting itself to the depth, and stiff in 
 shallows, like the stalk of the yellow lily; 
 and it contracts and curves downward when 
 seed-time approaches. The leaves show be- 
 neath the magnifier beautiful adaptations of 
 structure. They are not, like those of land- 
 plants, constructed with deep veins to receive 
 the rain and conduct it to the stem, but are 
 smooth and glossy, and of even surface. The 
 leaves of land-vegetation have also thousands 
 of little breathing-pores, principally on the 
 under side: the apple-leaf, for instance, has 
 twenty-four thousand to the square inch. 
 But here they are fewer ; they are wholly on 
 the upper side, and, whereas in other cases 
 they open or shut according to the moisture 
 of the atmosphere, here the greedy leaves, 
 secure of moisture, scarcely deign to close 
 them. Nevertheless, even these give some 
 recognition of hygrometric necessities, and, 
 though living on the water, and not merely 
 christened with dewdrops like other leaves, 
 but baptized by immersion all the time, they 
 are yet known to suffer in drought and to 
 take pleasure in the rain. 
 
 After speaking of the various kindred of 
 the water-lily, it would be wrong to leave our 
 91 
 
Water- Lilies 
 
 modest species without due mention of its 
 rarest and most magnificent relative, at first 
 claimed even as its twin sister, and classed as 
 a Nymphaea. I once lived near neighbor to 
 a Victoria Regia. Nothing in the world of 
 vegetable existence has such a human inter- 
 est. The charm is not in the mere size of 
 the plant, which disappoints everybody, as 
 Niagara does, when tried by that sole stand- 
 ard. The leaves of the Victoria, indeed, at- 
 tain a diameter of six feet ; the largest flowers, 
 of twenty-three inches, — four times the size 
 of the largest of our water-lilies. But it is 
 not the measurements of the Victoria, it is its 
 life which fascinates. It is not a thing merely 
 of dimensions, nor merely of beauty, but a 
 creature of vitality and motion. Those vast 
 leaves expand and change almost visibly. 
 They have been known to grow half an inch 
 an hour, eight inches a day. Rising one day 
 from the water, a mere clenched mass of 
 yellow prickles, a leaf is transformed the next 
 day to a crimson salver, gorgeously tinted on 
 its upturned rim. Then it spreads into a raft 
 of green, armed with long thorns, and sup- 
 ported by a framework of ribs and crosspieces, 
 an inch thick, and so substantial that the 
 Brazil Indians, while gathering the seed- 
 92 
 
Water-Lilies 
 
 vessels, place their young children on the 
 leaves ; — yrtcpe, or water-platter, they call 
 the accommodating plant. But even these 
 expanding leaves are not the glory of the 
 Victoria ; the glory is in the opening of the 
 flower. 
 
 I have sometimes looked in, for a passing 
 moment, at the greenhouse, its dwelling-place, 
 during the period of flowering, — and then 
 stayed for more than an hour, unable to 
 leave the fascinating scene. After the strange 
 flower-bud has reared its dark head from the 
 placid tank, moving it a little, uneasily, like 
 ^om.Q imprisoned water-creature, it pauses for 
 I moment in a sort of dumb despair. Then, 
 trembling again, and collecting all its powers, 
 it thrusts open, with an indignant jerk, the 
 rough calyx-leaves ; and the beautiful dis- 
 robing begins. The firm, white, central cone, 
 once so closely infolded, quivers a little, and 
 swiftly, before your eyes, the first of the hun- 
 dred petals detaches its delicate edges, and 
 springs back, opening towards the water, 
 while Its white reflection opens to meet it 
 from below. Many moments of repose follow, 
 — you watch, — another petal trembles, de- 
 taches, springs open, and is still. Then 
 another, and another, and another. Each 
 93 
 
Water- Lilies 
 
 movement is so quiet, yet so emphatic, so 
 living, so human, that the radiant creature 
 seems a Musidora of the water, and you 
 almost blush with a sense of guilt, in gazing 
 on that peerless privacy. As petal by petal 
 slowly opens, there still stands the central 
 cone of snow, a glacier, an alp, a Jungfrau, 
 while each avalanche of whiteness seems the 
 last. Meanwhile a strange, rich odor fills the 
 air, and Nature seems to concentrate all fas- 
 cinations and claim all senses for this jubilee 
 of her darling. 
 
 So pass the enchanted moments of the 
 evening, till the fair thing pauses at last, and 
 remains for hours unchanged. In the morn- 
 ing, one by one, those white petals close 
 again, shutting all their beauty in, and you 
 watch through the short sleep for the period 
 of waking. Can this bright, transfigured 
 creature appear again in the same chaste 
 loveliness? Your fancy can scarcely trust it, 
 fearing some disastrous change ; and your 
 fancy is too true a prophet. Come again, 
 after the second day's opening, and you start 
 at the transformation which one hour * has 
 secretly produced. Can this be the virgin 
 Victoria, — this thing of crimson passion, this 
 pile of pink and yellow, relaxed, expanding, 
 94 
 
Water- Lilies 
 
 voluptuous, lolling languidly upon the water, 
 never to rise again? In this short time every 
 tint of every petal is transformed ; it is gor- 
 geous in beauty, but it is ** Hebe turned to 
 Magdalen." 
 
 Such is the Victoria Regia. But our rustic 
 water-lily, our innocent Nymphaea, never 
 claiming such a hot-house glory, never droop- 
 ing into such a blush, blooms on placidly in 
 the quiet waters, till she modestly folds her 
 leaves for the last time, and bows her head 
 beneath the surface forever. Next year she 
 lives for us only in her children, fair and pure 
 as herself. 
 
 Nay, not alone in them, but also in memory. 
 The fair vision will not fade from us, though 
 the paddle has dipped its last crystal drop 
 from the waves, and the boat is drawn upon 
 the shore. We may yet visit many lovely 
 and lonely places, — meadows thick with 
 violet, or the homes of the shy Rhodora, or 
 those sloping forest-haunts where the slight 
 Linnaea hangs its twin-born heads, — but no 
 scene will linger on our vision like this annual 
 Feast of the Lilies. On scorching mountains, 
 amid raw prairie-winds, or upon the regal 
 ocean, the white pageant shall come back to 
 memory again, with all the luxury of summer 
 95 
 
Water-Lilies 
 
 heats, and all the fragrant coolness that can 
 relieve them. We shall fancy ourselves 
 again among these fleets of anchored lilies, 
 — again, like Urvasi, sporting amid the Lake 
 of Lotuses. 
 
 For that which is remembered is often 
 more vivid than that which is seen. The eye 
 paints better in the presence, the heart in the 
 absence, of the object most dear. " He who 
 longs after beautiful Nature can best describe 
 her," said Bettine Brentano ; *' he who is in 
 the midst of her loveliness can only lie down 
 and enjoy." It enhances the truth of the 
 poet's verses, that he writes them in his study. 
 Absence is the very air of passion, and all 
 the best description is in mcmoriani. As with 
 our human beloved, when the graceful pres- 
 ence is with us, we cannot analyze or describe, 
 but merely possess, and only after its depar- 
 ture can it be portrayed by our yearning 
 desires ; so is it with Nature : only in losing 
 her do we gain the power to describe her, 
 and we are introduced to Art, as we are to 
 Eternity, by the dropping away of our 
 companions. 
 
 96 
 
INDEX OF PLANTS AND ANIMALS 
 MENTIONED 
 
 Adder's-Tongue Arethusa, 21. 
 
 Alder, 5, 15, 22, 36, 37, 67, 78. 
 
 Almond, 40. 
 
 A mela7ichier Canadensis, 55, 74. 
 
 A7idroineda polifolia, 47. 
 
 Anemone, 11, 39, 40, 42, 50. 
 
 Anemone, Blue, 37. 
 
 Anemone, Rue-Leaved, 40. 
 
 A nemotie t/mliciroides, 40. 
 
 Ant, 3. 
 
 Apple, 34, 59. 
 
 Aquilegia, 51. 
 
 Arbor Vitce, 61. 
 
 Arbutus, Trailing, 37. See 
 
 Epigaea. 
 Arethusa, 46, 49. 
 Aronia, 55. 
 Arrowhead, 75. 
 Aster, 22, 26, 27, 49, 75. 
 Azalea, 19, 29, 51, 74. 
 Azalea, Pink, 18, 47. 
 
 Bead-Ruby, 52. 
 Beaver, 81. 
 Bee, 78. 
 
 Beech, 27, 35, 52, S3- 
 Beetle, 55, 78. 
 Bellwort, ii, 42, 50. 
 Birch, 27, 37, 54, 69, 74. 
 Bishop's Cap, ii. 
 Bittern, 80. 
 Blackbird, 34, 67, 80. 
 Blackbird, Red-Winged, 43. 
 Bladder-Wort, 26. 
 Blethisa qnadricollis, 48. 
 Bloodroot, 8, 9, 10, 42, 45, 50. 
 Blue Anemone, 7. 
 Bluebird, 34, 36, 43, 57, 58. 
 Blue-Eyed Grass, 50. 
 Blue-jay, 81. 
 Bobolink, 58. 
 Buckbean, 14. 
 Bull-frog, 36. 
 Burdock, 45. 
 Buttercup, 17, 45. 
 Butterfly, 78, 79. 
 Button-Bush, 75. 
 
 Caddis-worm, 55, 67, 68, 78. 
 Calla, Ethiopic, 14. 
 Calla, Wild, 14. 
 Calopogon, 21. 
 Campanula, 50. 
 Canker-moth, 55. 
 Carabus, 48. 
 
 Cardinal-Flower, 24, 25, 46, 75. 
 Cat-bird, 58. 
 Celandine, 45. 
 Cherry, 40. 
 Chestnut, 53, 69, 70. 
 Chickweed, 42, 45. 
 Chipping-sparrow, 59. 
 Christmas Rose, 5. 
 Chrysanthemu7n leticanthemunt^ 
 
 51- 
 Cicindela rugi/rons, 48. 
 Cinquefoil, 11, 42, 50. 
 Cinquefoil, Mountain, 24. 
 Cistus, 36, 49. 
 Claytonia, 8, 42. 
 Clematis, 25, 49, 75. 
 Clethra, 47, 49. 74- 
 Clintonia, 11, 46. 
 Clover, 17, 29. 
 Colt's-foot, 4. 
 Columbine, 50. 
 Convallaria, 50. 
 Cool- Wort, 52. 
 Corallorhiza verna, 48. 
 Cornel, Dwarf, 14, 17. 
 Cornel-tree, 13. 
 Cornus yiorida, 46. 
 Corj'dalis, 12. 
 Corydalis, White, 42, 47. 
 Cowslip, 10, 42, 51. 
 Cowslip (English), 51. 
 Cricket, 36. 
 Crocus, 42. 
 Cucumber-Root, 50. 
 Cupid's Tears, 3. 
 Cypripedium, 16, 48. 
 Cypripedium parvifloncm^ 17. 
 Cypripedium, Yellow, 47. 
 
 Daffodil, 43. 
 
 97 
 
Index 
 
 Daisy, 43. 
 
 Damsel-fly, 79. 
 Dandelion, 10, 20, 42, 45. 
 Desmocerus palliattis, 78. 
 Diervilla, 51. 
 Doe, 82. 
 
 Donacia vtetallica, 79. 
 Dor-bug, 67. 
 Draccena borealis, 48. 
 Dragon-fly, 68. 
 Duck, Wild, 68. 
 Dutchman's Breeches, 12, 47. 
 Dytiscus, 67. 
 
 Easter-flower, 40. 
 Elm, 34, 52, S3, 55. 
 Ephemera, 78. 
 Epigaea,4i, 43. 67. 
 EpigcBa repefis, 37, 38. 
 Equisetum, 45. 
 Eupatorium, 75. 
 
 Fair Maid of February, 43. 
 
 Fawn, 82. 
 
 Fern, 45. 
 
 Fern, Maidenhair, 27. 
 
 Fir-cones, 84. 
 
 Fire-fly, 14, 78. 
 
 Flicker, 55. 
 
 Fly, 78, 82. 
 
 Fringe-cup, 52. 
 
 Frog, 56. 
 
 Gay-Wings, 11, 52. 
 Gentian, 46, 50. 
 Gentian, Barrel, 26. 
 Geranium, 49. 
 Geranium, Wild, 17. 
 Gerris, 55, 67. 
 Ginseng, 11. 
 Ginseng, Dwarf, 47. 
 Gnat, 77. 
 Gold Thread, 50. 
 Golden-rod, 22, 24, 27, 75. 
 Grape-vine, 27, 53, 67. 
 Grasshopper, 36, 78. 
 Grub, 59. 
 
 Hair-bird, 59. 
 Harebell, 21, 50. 
 Hawk, 34, 80. 
 Hawk-moth, 79. 
 Hawkweed, 21. 
 Hazel, 34. 
 Hellebore, 5. 
 Hellebore, American, 45, 
 Hellno prceusta, 48. 
 Hemlock, 53. 
 
 98 
 
 Hepatica triloba^ 6, 7, 37, 38, 39 
 
 41, 42, 43. SO- 
 Hobble-Bush, 11. 
 Hollyhock, 82. 
 Honeysuckle, 51, 84. 
 Horia, 48. 
 Hottonia, 46. 
 Houstonia, 11, 20, 42. 
 Humming-bird, 3, 45. 
 Hyacinth, 15, 43. 
 Hydropeltis, 76. 
 Hylas, 36. 
 
 Ichneumon-fly, 78. 
 Iris, 49. 
 
 Jonquil, 43. 
 
 Katydid, 36, 78. 
 King-bird, 15, 
 Kingfisher, 80. 
 
 Labrador Tea, 12. 
 
 Lace-fly, 78. 
 
 Ladies Tresses, 26, 50. 
 
 Lady-bird, 78. 
 
 Lady's-Slipper, 16. 
 
 Land-lizards, 57. 
 
 Laurel, 19, 50, 60, 82. 
 
 Laurel, Ground, 37. 
 
 Laurel, Mountain, 18, 74. 
 
 Ledum, 12. 
 
 Leptura, 78. 
 
 Libellula, 77. 
 
 Life-Everlasting, 24. 
 
 Lily, 50, 82. 
 
 Lily-of-the-Valley, Wild, 11. 
 
 Lily, Meadow, 22, 23, 24. 
 
 Lily, Pond. See Lily, Water. 
 
 Lily, Water, 15, 20, 26, 67, 95. 
 
 Lily, Yellow, 83, 91. 
 
 Linnaja, 12, 47, 49, 95. 
 
 Liverleaf, 37, 50. 
 
 Liverwort, 7, 37. 
 
 Lobelia, 49. 
 
 Lonicera, 51. 
 
 Loosestrife, 21. 
 
 Lotus, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89. 
 
 Lotus, Zizyphus, 84. 
 
 Lousewort, 50. 
 
 Lupine, 15. 
 
 Maidenhair Fern, 27. 
 Maple, 14, 27, 53, 54. 
 Marsh-Marigold, 11, 43. 
 Marsh-Marigold (English), 51. 
 Mayflower {see also Epigaea), 6, 7, 
 36, 37. 38, 39» 45, 50. 
 
Index 
 
 May- Wings, 52. 
 
 Meadow-Sweet, 23. 
 
 Medeola, 50. 
 
 Medlar, 74. 
 
 Me7iya7ithes trifoliata^ 14. 
 
 Midge, 77. 
 
 Milkweed, 27, 75. 
 
 Mink, 81. 
 
 Minnow, 80. 
 
 Miskodeed, 8. 
 
 Mitella, 11. 
 
 Moccason-Flower, 16. 
 
 Moccason-Flower, Yellow, 17. 
 
 Monkey-Flower, 24, 75. 
 
 Moose, 81. 
 
 Moss, Feather, 9. 
 
 Moth, 78. 
 
 Mouse-ear, 42. 
 
 Mullein, 45. 
 
 Muskrat or Musquash, 68, 81. 
 
 Narcissus, 43. 
 
 Nelumbiaces, 90. 
 
 Nelumbium, 76. 
 
 Neottia (now Spiranthes), 50. 
 
 Newt, Water, 55, 56, 80. 
 
 Nightshade, 45. 
 
 Notonecta, 55, 67. 
 -^ Nuphar, 76, 83. 
 ^ Nymphasa, 84, 92, 95. 
 ^ Nymph^eacea^, 90. 
 
 , NyniphcEa alba, 76. 
 mJ NymphcBa ccerulea, 83. 
 
 Nymphcea Lotus, 83. 
 
 Nyinphcea odorata, 75. 
 
 Ny})iphcBa saiiguiiiea, 75. 
 
 Nymphcea Victoria, 89. 
 
 Oak, 34, 35, 53, 57. 
 Omophron, 48. 
 Orchid, 16, 17. 
 Orchis, 21. 
 
 Orchis s/>ectabilis, 48. 
 Osmunda, 45. 
 Otter, 81. 
 
 Paiiagoeus fasciatiis , 48. 
 Papaveraceae, 90. 
 Pasque-flower, 40. 
 Pedicularis, 50. 
 Peony, 82. 
 Phryganea, 78. 
 Pickerel, 80. 
 Pickerel- Frog, 80. 
 Pickerel-Weed, 26, 76. 
 Pine, 53, 61. 
 Pitch- Pine, 53. 
 Plantain, 46. 
 
 Pogonia, 21. 
 Polygala, n, 26. 
 Pond-weed, 77. 
 Pontederia, 76. 
 Potamogetons, 77. 
 Potentilla, 50. 
 Pout, 80. 
 
 Primrose, 5, 21, 51. 
 Primrose (English), 51. 
 Primrose, Evening, 36. 
 Pulsatilla, 40. 
 
 Ranunculaceae, 90. 
 
 Raspberry, 27, 44. 
 
 Reed, Water, 68. 
 
 Rhexia, 46,48. 
 
 Rhododendron, 12, ig. 
 
 Rhodora, 13, 46, 47, 49, 95. 
 
 Robin, 34, 36, 51, 57. 
 
 Rock-Tripe, 50. 
 
 Rose, White, 82. 
 
 Rose, Wild, 21, 23, 75. 
 
 Rush, Horsetail or Scouring, 45. 
 
 Salamander, 56, 57. 
 
 Sanguinaria, 47, 50. 
 
 Saxifrage, n, 42. 
 
 Scarlet Tanager, 18. 
 
 Sea-Anemone, 62. 
 
 Self-Heal, 50. 
 
 Serpent, 57. 
 
 Shad-bush or Shad-blow, 55, 74. 
 
 Shad-spirit, 55. 
 
 Sisyrinchimn anceps, 50. 
 
 Skull-cap, 75. 
 
 Snake, 56. 
 
 Snake-head, 75. 
 
 Snowdrop, 5, 42, 43. 
 
 Solomon's-Seal, 17, 50. 
 
 Sparrow, Chipping, 59. 
 
 Sparrow, Field, 9. 
 
 Sparrow, Song, 34, 36, 43, 57, 70. 
 
 Sphcsroderus stetiostomus, 48. 
 
 Sphex, 78. 
 
 Sphinx, 79. 
 
 Spider, 71. 
 
 Spiraea, 23, 24, 49, 75. 
 
 Spring-Beauty, 8, 42. 
 
 Squirrel, 35, 57. 
 
 Squirrel-Cup, 7, 52. 
 
 Strawbell, 50. 
 
 Strawberry, 11, 42. 
 
 Swallow, 80. 
 
 Sycamore, 59. 
 
 Tadpole, 56, 67, 68. 
 Thistle, 24, 45, 75. 
 Thrush, 51. 
 
 99 
 
Index 
 
 Thrush, Red, 9. 
 Tiarella, 11, 49. 
 Toad, 36, 56. 
 Toad, Tree, 36, 
 Touch-me-not, 50, 75. 
 Trailing-Arbutus, 50. 
 Trientalis, 49. 
 Trillium, Painted, n. 
 Trillium, Red, n. 
 Tritons, 56. 
 Turtle, 55, 56, 68, 80. 
 
 Umbilicaria, 50. 
 Utricularia, 77. 
 Uvularia, 50. 
 
 Veery, 29. 
 
 Veratrum, 45. 
 
 Vervain, 24, 50, 75. 
 
 Viburnum, 27, 77. 
 
 Victoria Regia, 89, 92, 93, 94, 95. 
 
 Villarsia, 77. 
 
 Viola acuta, 48. 
 
 Viola debilis, 46, 47. 
 
 Viola rotund if olia, 42. 
 
 Violet, II, 42, 43, 50, 95. 
 
 Violet, Dog-Tooth, lo, 42. 
 
 Violet, Yellow, ii, 17, 42,46. 
 
 Walnut, 53, 54. 
 
 Wasp, 78, 82. 
 
 Water-Boatman, 55, 67. 
 
 Water-Newt, 55, 56, 80. 
 
 Water-Platter, 93. 
 
 Water-Ranunculus, 77. 
 
 Water- Shield, 76. 
 
 Water-Skater, 55, 67. 
 
 Waxwork, 27. 
 
 Whippoorwill, 36. 
 
 Whirlwig, 79. 
 
 White Man's Footstep, 46. 
 
 White-Pine, 53. 
 
 Whiteweed, 45, 51. 
 
 Wild Indigo, 21. 
 
 Willow, 37. 
 
 Willow, Swamp, 74. 
 
 Wind-Flower, 40, 50. 
 
 Witch-Hazel, 5, 26, 27, 35, 44, 75. 
 
 Woodpecker, 59. 
 
 Woodpecker, Golden-winged, 55. 
 
 Yarrow, 45, 50. 
 Yellow-bird, 58. 
 Yellow-Throat, Maryland, 9. 
 Yrupe, 93. 
 
 Zizyphus Lotus., 84. 
 
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