THE AMERICAN BOTANIST 125 



the sloping sides of the roadbed in drifts of faintly rosy 

 bloom spreading over the levels below with a tenderness and 

 grace hard to reconcile with my previous opinion of this some- 

 what coarse and ragged plant. Of course it was distance that 

 lent enchantment, but the picture was one that will live long 

 in my memory. 



Wild iris was one of the things that I had seen only in 

 scattered clumps until we drove beside a sluggish stream where 

 for a long distance the swampy ground on each side was softly 

 purple with blooming irises. Since then I have seen similar 

 masses many times and it seems to me the most delightful 

 of "color schemes" that we see along the road for in this 

 vicinity, daisies, buttercups, and devil's paint-brush form a 

 large proportion of our color pictures and none of these have 

 the elusive charm and beauty of the iris. 



Of course, besides these larger pictures that fill the eye, 

 even when seen from a swiftly moving car, there are many 

 glimpses of exquisite beauty such as the noisy little brook that 

 came racing down a steep ravine with much fuss and pother 

 quite ignoring the forget-me-nots growing thickly along it3 

 path in its eagerness to reach the sea, the tiny bulbous blad- 

 der ferns fringing a dripping cliff ledge, and the rhexias 

 gleaming like jewels among the sand and moss besides a lahe- 

 shore road. 



Automobiles are well known to have a large share of the 

 depravity of inanimate things and for this reason, probably, 

 punctures and blow-outs usually (^ccur at the most barren and 

 uninteresting places but one day the motor most obligingly 

 died beside a springy meadow where ladies tresses grew thick 

 among the stubble. The passenger waited very patiently that 

 day for the necessary adjustments that later started us again 

 on our way. Orchids, even the tiniest, always stir the blood 



