30 



THE ORCHIDS OF NEW ENGLAND. 



have been accustomed to hunt for it in the pine woods of East 

 Hartford, Conn., my signal and guide-post being the pretty 

 little Fringed Polygala. A lady familiar with it as it grows in 

 the Adirondacks assures me that she most often meets with it 

 where pines have fallen. " It seems to have a great fondness 

 for decaying wood; and I often see a whole row perched like 

 birds along a crumbling log." Gray rather restricts it to " dry 

 or moist woods, under evergreens," for which he is corrected 

 by Meehan, who says : " its general place of growth is in woods 

 of deciduous trees," and, for myself, I know that sandy soil 

 and pines and shade are not indispensable to its welfare: the 

 finest specimens I ever saw sprang out of cushions of crisp rein- 

 deer moss high up among the rocks of an exposed hill-side, 

 and again I have found it growing vigorously in almost open 

 swamps, but nearly colorless from excessive moisture. This 

 is, perhaps, an unusual place for it, as would appear from the 

 last verse of a pathetic poem I have read detailing the strug- 

 gles of an ardent botanist : * 



" The mud was on his shoon, and O 

 The brier was in his thumb ; 

 His staff was in his hand, but not 

 The Cypripedium." 



Elaine Goodale has put her impressions of this flower in the 

 following verses (she represents the azaleas as blooming at the 

 same time), and, it will be seen, makes it an upland flower: 



Stately and calm the forest rears its crown 



Above the eternal height, — 

 Wide sweeps of early color, shimmering down, 



Renew its gracious might ! 



Shy and proud among the forest flowers, 



In maiden solitude, 

 Is one whose charm is never wholly ours 



Nor yielded to our mood. 



* Ye Lay of ye Woodpeckore, Odds and Ends, Henry A. Beers. 



