172 NATURE STUDY. 



sentiment which reads into the animal world too much of 

 thought and feeling. We want no more personification of 

 animal life, but in humility and reverence to become 

 spokesmen for those fellow creatures who cannot .speak for 

 themselves. 



A Garden of Sweet Herbs. 



BY SUSY C. FOGCx. 



lyong ago, in the old-fashioned gardens, I am told, the 

 fragrant herbs were never wanting. 



The stately hollyhocks and the larkspurs, the tall phlox, 

 tne poppies and the sweet-williams were the pride and 

 show of the garden. The red roses were inevitably there, 

 and the spotted red lily that occasionally surprises us as we 

 drive along a country wayside ; usually the outpost or em- 

 blem, as it were, of some effort and civilization that had 

 once existed nearby, but all other signs of which have long 

 since fallen in ashes or decay save the door-yard trees or 

 a- neighboring orchard. 



I have always regarded this same red lily with an unjust 

 suspicion, for I remember being told as a child not to smell 

 of one of them for they would cause freckles ; a thing which 

 I also remember doing at the earliest opportunity, if I may 

 be pardoned for the very personal allusion. If one has not 

 the knowledge, is it not better to experiment when only a 

 few honest freckles are at stake ? 



Somewhere in the dear old garden there would surely 

 be a bunch of ribbon-grass or of spider-wort, a plant of 

 southernwood, a sweet-scented geranium, a bed of sprawl- 

 ing portulacas and the ladies' delights in trim little borders 

 of box. Those ladies' delights ! How they flourished in 

 the quaint old town of Marblehead in a bit of sand garden 



