34 FLOWERS OF THE FIELD AND FOREST. 



THIS is by no means a spring flower, for it opens its delicate 

 little twin blossoms of pink in the hot days of June and July. 

 But I suppose the plant is associated in the minds of most 

 lovers of nature with the memory of the very earliest sunny days 

 of the year, for amidst the universal brown of early spring, its 

 bright evergreen leaves, and its brilliant red berries, are almost 

 the only things which gladden the weary eyes with bits of pleas- 

 ing color. Here and there a little bank or tuft of moss, or a 

 frond of rock-fern, adds its greenness, and shares with the Par- 

 tridge-Berry the gratitude of eyes hungering for the tints of sum- 

 mer. Especially grateful to us is this humble plant, in the time 

 when its shining leaves and sparkling berries peep up from their 

 nest in the dull dead leaves, sometimes just from under the edge 

 of the retreating snow. But in the luxuriant life and color of mid- 

 summer it would scarcely be noticed at all, as it modestly puts up 

 its delicate pink flowers, in some dark nook, hidden away and 

 crowded out of sight by a mob of obstreperous weeds. As red as 

 the plump cheeks of this little berry commonly are, it has been 

 sometimes found as white as snowdrops. A young lady sent 

 some white ones, two or three years ago, from York, Pennsylvania, 

 to Dr. Gray, the first he had ever heard of, it seems. 



In some parts of the country the aromatic Wintergreen, or 

 Checkerberry, is called the Partridge-Berry, Prof. Goodale states. 

 I am sure that in some parts of New York and Pennsylvania I 

 have heard our plant called the Checkerberry, and in those regions, 

 the latter name is not applied to the Wintergreen, as it is in New 

 England. The scientific name of the plant was given to it by the 

 great Linnaeus, in honor of Dr. John Mitchell of Virginia, who, 

 during the first half of the last century, was one of our best known 



