WILD LIFE OF ORCHARD AND FIELD 



had told me no one knew; but since then I have 

 read in the Flora of New York that "the popu- 

 lar name of the plant is said to be that of an Indian 

 who recommended it to the whites'' for its medici- 

 nal value, the root being regarded as a cure for 

 gravel. Nowhere is it or can it be more beautiful, 

 I think, than I see it as I write, their pagoda-like 

 columns half hidden in sprays of sumach, made 

 almost transparent against the afternoon light, 

 and a playground for humming-birds. 



From what a flowery jungle they rise! Masses 

 of grasses, sedges, docks, cat-tail flags; ferns, 

 great and small, coarse and fine; herbs bearing 

 tiny white and blue and pink and purple flowers; 

 asters purple and white, and struggling clumps 

 of golden-rod, waving level sprays covered with 

 young flowers and looking exactly like miniature 

 hemlocks after a yellow snow-storm, if you can 

 imagine such a thing. None of the forty kinds 

 of golden-rod with which we are blessed is more 

 graceful and pleasing than this swamp variety. 



How long a catalogue a botanist might make 

 out of this quarter-acre of jungle, how many va- 

 rieties he would find, how many an essay he might 

 write, or scientific sermons could be preached, I 

 hesitate to say. He would tell me, to begin with, 



338 



