20 RIVERBY 



pleasing; it has a faded, indefinite sort of look. 

 Its color is not strong and positive enough to be 

 effective in the mass, yet each single flower is a gem 

 of itself. The color of the common violet is much 

 more firm and pronounced ; and how many a grassy 

 bank is made gay with it in the mid-May days! 

 We have a great variety of violets, and they are 

 very capricious as to perfume. The only species 

 which are uniformly fragrant are the tall Canada 

 violet, so common in our northern woods, white, 

 with a tinge of purple to the under side of its 

 petals, and the small white violet of the marshy 

 places; yet one summer I came upon a host of the 

 spurred violet in a sunny place in the woods which 

 filled the air with a delicate perfume. A handful 

 of them yielded a perceptible fragrance, but a sin- 

 gle flower none that I could detect. The Canada 

 violet very frequently blooms in the fall, and is 

 more fragrant at such times than in its earlier 

 blooming. I must not forget to mention that deli- 

 cate and lovely flower of May, the fringed polygala. 

 You gather it when you go for the fragrant, showy 

 orchis, that is, if you are lucky enough to find it. 

 It is rather a shy flower, and is not found in every 

 wood. One day we went up and down through 

 the woods looking for it, woods of mingled oak, 

 chestnut, pine, and hemlock, and were about giv- 

 ing it up when suddenly we came upon a gay com- 

 pany of them beside an old wood-road. It was as 

 if a flock of small rose-purple butterflies had alighted 

 there on the ground before us. The whole plant 



