90 IValks in New England 



does, and as the arbutus does, and indeed almost 

 every wild flower, by the constant meddling of 

 the park improvers. There is no flower more 

 lovely and more delightful than the erythronium 

 this adder-tongue lily but it must be let alone. 

 Now the cassandra and the andromeda are bloom 

 ing in the swamps, and all around their borders 

 the magical rosy purple rhodora is aflame, and 

 in the edges of damp woods the gold-thread sends 

 up from its beautiful green vine that runs under 

 ground its bright starry blossoms. The wake- 

 robin and the painted trillium, its fellow, are now 

 opening in the woods ; the lovely corydalis is in 

 bloom on the mountain, its favourite home the 

 seams in the venerable ledges where the ages have 

 lodged bits of soil ; there is budding the strange 

 and forbidding flowerage of the poison ivy ; and 

 the bright yellow rocket and pretty zizia, the ear 

 liest of the parsleys, are in that stage. Note, too, 

 the strong growth of the plants that are to bear 

 those sturdy democracies, the asters and golden- 

 rods, every apparent flower really a community 

 of equals, and many hundreds of such communi 

 ties gregarious in the fields and by the roadsides, 

 making confederacies of beauty in their later days, 

 when all the delicate graces which live so briefly 

 now are without evidence, and hundreds of others, 

 the riper riches of the summer, have bloomed 



