Flora of Wyoming County 



into lakes by moraines damming their original out- 

 lets. Oneida, set east and west crosswise of the 

 glacier, is broad and very shallow, contrasting 

 sharply in this regard with all the others. Cayuga, 

 at the head of which lies Ithaca, is the longest and 

 largest of them all. 



Silver Lake I used to visit with special botanical 

 interest, for there I found white and yellow pond 

 lilies and the purple pickerel weed, plants which 

 grew nowhere else in our neighborhood. And in the 

 oak woods about I used to gather the fringed gentian 

 in its season. Under the pine and around the rocks 

 at Portage were still other interesting forms. The 

 county, I came to recognize, had three entirely Difference 

 distinct floras, besides the special flora of the spruce ^floras 

 and balsam swamps. One, as already indicated, 

 belonged to the beech and maple woods, one to the 

 oak lands, and the other to the rocks. Afterward, 

 in college vacations, I continued my studies of the 

 plants of the Genesee region, and presented for my 

 graduating thesis as Master of Science at Cornell 

 in 1872 a paper entitled "The Flora of Wyoming 

 County." This was a rather intensive study of the 

 local relations of plants to soil and other con- 

 ditions. 



Unfortunately I had no training in drawing and I Painting 

 never learned the art of perspective. But at about the 

 fifteen years of age I began painting the wild flowers 

 of the neighborhood, and people to whom Mother 

 proudly showed my pictures said I had "genius." 

 Certainly I had a talent for discriminating color and 

 form; my efforts, however, never went beyond the 

 sketching of flowers and fishes to preserve their 

 bright colors, and in recent years the making of 



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