a flfca^Bap on flfconument. 79 



well, and he would not be in good odour. Nor do I 

 believe that any trout ever gave more pleasure to the 

 hunter. Did you ever hunt the trillium ? Did you 

 ever seek the arbutus in its forest haunts ? 



I found my trilliums in a wood, less than a quar- 

 ter of a mile from the road. You go in by a path 

 which begins at the corner of the wood, and almost 

 immediately find yourself under the high spreading 

 boughs of a clump of hemlocks, tall, sombre, and 

 mysterious. They have a whisper like the pine ; and 

 like that tree they also, in the struggle for light 

 and sunshine, lift the most of their branches skyward, 

 and are almost bare of limbs lower down on their 

 trunks. Beyond them is a sluggish stream where 

 the marsh marigold is blazing in great spots of yellow, 

 and where by-and-by the fringed orchis will come, 

 and the cardinal-flower. White and yellow violets 

 dot the grassy wood-road which forms the path, and 

 the ferns are beginning to uncurl which in July and 

 August will wave their graceful fronds in the lightest 

 zephyrs. Just now the ferns are interesting, but not 

 graceful. They are long and lank and fuzzy, and 

 remind one of nothing so much as young colts, with 

 their thin legs and frowzy coats. 



But the trillium patch is a little farther on. It is 

 time to look for it now, on either side of the way, 

 deep in the tangled thicket or close to the grassy 

 sward. There is one, thrusting its long, lily-like 

 stem up through the matted leaves, its bud rolled up 

 into a sharp point, so as to pierce the tangle more 



