ALONG THE WATERWAYS 45 



"There 's Water Lilies." 



Yes, and a landscape fit to drive a flower pho- 

 tographer mad with the impossibility of keeping 

 the merest fragment of it, though an impressionist 

 painter would have been filled with joy. Lilies 

 gathered in circles where there was no current, 

 and sturdy purple Pickerel Weed came out as far 

 from shore as it could wade to meet these floating 

 islands. But that which held the eye longest was 

 a broad band of clear green foliage, thickly feath- 

 ered with soft white, which margined the entire 

 pond, a metallic glint, as of strands of copper wire, 

 showing here and there as if it bound the mass 

 together. 



The flower was the familiar Lizard's Tail, with 

 its delicately spiked white flowers and heart-shaped 

 leaves, both of which droop on being gathered. 

 The copper wire was Dodder, a leafless parasite, 

 with small white flowers and berries, which lives 

 upon the plants of waterways. In the hand, nei- 

 ther plant was of conspicuous appearance, but 

 growing in rank luxuriance in such a haunt, the 

 effect was almost tropical. I know of no other 

 like bit of picturesqueness hereabout, except where, 

 at the end of a long drive across country, I once 

 came upon the pale yellow native Lotus growing 



