In the Dog-Days : 1898 149 



ful purple wayside species soon will be. Now, 

 also, the most splendidly coloured funguses are 

 in evidence, those great crimson boletuses in the 

 woodland, and the deep orange mushrooms. It is 

 thus the choice season for parasites, and among 

 them also is to be found the corallorhiza, or coral 

 root, to which little beauty belongs, but only a 

 certain element of marvel, as it springs from the 

 damp mold of the deep woods, brown of stalk and 

 with dead brown or yellowish bracts in place of 

 leaves, with rather pretty, waxen flowers, devoid of 

 light in their dull tones. There is also the true 

 beech-drops, as unearthly or too earthly as the 

 others. 



The swamps are now reservoirs of unliberated 

 heat, where the atmosphere steams visibly in the 

 sunshine and the poison sumach is filling its for 

 bidding panicles of berries, as the poison ivy is 

 doing in like manner around the fences and on 

 the trees in the open lands. But the swamp rose 

 still blooms in these deep cedar-fringed and hack 

 matack-bordered recesses and the sphagnum is 

 riotous in its growth. The hackmatacks, our native 

 larches, are yellowing already, and the water- 

 maples are sending forth their brilliant red signals 

 of the coming fall. The end is foreknown in the 

 swamps first of all ; before even a bough changes 

 on the maples of the upland or the first leaf crim- 



