148 Walks in New England 



or mountain mint, and many more whose spicy 

 fragrance fills the air and attracts the bees. 



These are of the fields, of the unshaded places, 

 but there are also the offsprings of the wood mold 

 which charm, or which interest because of their 

 peculiarities, if they do not charm. Such are the 

 parasites of the tree roots and the dwellers upon 

 decaying wood. Now may be seen in full char 

 acter that amazing plant which the Indians are 

 said to have named &quot; ghost flower,&quot; which the 

 Puritans first called &quot; corpse plant,&quot; and which 

 later New Englanders named &quot;Indian pipe&quot; 

 the monotropa uniflora of the botanists. The 

 danger of judging by appearances is well illustrated 

 by this truly ghostlike flower, for it is closely al 

 lied to the trailing arbutus, the kalmias, the huc 

 kleberries and the deerberry and a score more of 

 plants so unlike that their actual fellowship seems 

 a fiction. This is analogous to human nature, 

 for we are all of one blood, and the Caucasian 

 philosopher and scientist is as like the Andaman is 

 lander as the arbutus is like the Indian pipe, or the 

 mountain laurel like the false beech-drops, which 

 also are now in bloom. Strangely, too, one of the 

 loveliest groups of flowers of this season bears 

 the same stigma of filched growth, the gerardias, 

 whose most showy species, the yellow and the 

 oak-leaved, are now in full bloom, and the grace- 



