218 THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST 



pleased anticipation based on its pretty colour. I must have been very small 

 at the rime, for I made my way down the backstairs to the kitchen, clambered 

 onto a chair and so into the sink, where I was found presently by the cook, 

 sitting with my tongue out under the cold tap, trying in vain to put out the fires. 



Hepatica was still cropping up everywhere on this slope and among the 

 leaves in the wood, when I discovered my first Bloodroot and Dog Tooth 

 Violets. And here began a new chapter in the romance, for the Bloodroot I 

 found was a "poppy" and the so-called violet or Yellow Adder's Tongue no 

 less than a wild "lily." This j)ath of botanical kinship was full of surprising 

 turns, you never knew what you'd find just round the corner. It had all the 

 comicality of a 3-legged race, with its dot-and-carry-one of incongruous pairs, 

 columbine and kingcup, leek and orange lily, wood-nettle and elm, linking it 

 along together. The day of the dog-tooth violet was also the day of my first 

 real violet, the little white fragrant kind of the swamp; and in a few days I 

 had found three or four species, each in turn more beautiful than its fellows, 

 all with the same sweet wistfulness in the face of them and dehcate pencilling 

 of eyelashes. It was while I was still bending over the violets, as it seems to 

 me, that I suddenly noticed the woods were full of fairy troops; they had stolen 

 a march upon me ; really the best way to see the fairies is to pretend you're not 

 looking for them ; then they peep out from vmder the leaves and creep from 

 the hollows. They were all round me — "Jack-in-the-pulpit," the "Steeple- 

 chimes" of New York's Governor (Clintonia), Bellwort, Wild Lily-of-the- 

 Valley, Trilliums, Wake-robin, Twist-stalk, Solomon's Seal, Indian Cucumber, 

 Ladies' Slippers, Wild Ginger, Goldthread, Baneberry, Crinkleroot, Dutchman's 

 Breeches, Squirrel Corn, Bishop's Cap, Foamflower, Cranesbill, Milkwort, Shin- 

 leaf, Starflower, Lousewort, Twinflower; what magic names and forms to 

 conjure with, and bring the whole rout of Titania's court abroad among the 

 maples ! "A wood near Athens," or a sugar bush in old Ontario^what odds 

 to the little folk? 



It was from these beginnings that I swung down the great avenues of 

 Flowering Plants ; the way of Arrowhead and Arum, of Lily and Orchid ; the 

 way of Sweetgale, Sandalwood and Birthwort ; the way of Crowfoot, Pink and 

 Poppy, Sundew and Saxifrage, Rose. Jewelweed and Mallow, Enchanter's 

 Nightshade and Bunchberry, all flowers with petals kept apart ; and last, the 

 way of the flowers with welded petals ; and these, after the Lilies and Orchids, 

 were my favorite flowers ; fortunately, their prime was after midsummer, some- 

 what later than the hey-day of the Polypetalous tribe, so that I could dally 

 awhile with the latter, before I need devote all my time, as sooner or later I 

 must, to the beautiful Heaths, the Primulas and Gentians, Bluebells and 

 LobeUas; but perhaps above all, to the great phalanx from Borage to Bladder- 

 wort, headed by the incomparable Figworts ; in this family with its Speedwells, 

 Turtleheads, Beardtongue, Monkey Flower, Hedge Hyssop and Gerardias, 

 cousins of the lovely English Foxglove, I was never tired of working; adding 

 species to species, and genus after genus, till every gap was filled. 



The countless paths of marvel revealed to me along the way have served 

 to fill a score of summers to the brim with beauty, and still no sign of exhaustion ; 

 they have made the addition of Ferns and Club-mosses to the Flowering Plants, 



