76 FLOWERS OF THE FIELD AND FOREST. 



Was it then for heads of arrows, 

 Arrow-heads of chalcedony 

 Arrow-heads of flint and jasper, 

 That my Hiawatha halted 

 In the land of the Dacotahs? 



Longfellow. 



WHAT Hiawatha certainly was not looking after "in the land of 

 the Dacotahs," arrow-heads, we shall most certainly see, in this 

 excellent portrait of the Sagittaria. If we may judge by both 

 the scientific and popular name of the plant, that is what the ob- 

 server has most distinctly seen when he has met it in nature. 

 The elegant outline and curious veining of the leaf will attract 

 our attention and admiration more than the pure white flower. 

 The pronounced significance of the leaf, both in the picture and in 

 the plant, leads me on to say something about the leaves of plants. 



I suppose many readers are accustomed to think that the leaves 

 of plants are of small account. They perhaps recall how in ancient 

 times a certain fig-tree came under severe reproach because it bore 

 " nothing but leaves." Then, too, " when the summer is past and 

 the harvest is ended," how the dead leaves cumber the ground, are 

 trodden underfoot of men, and become the sport of wild autumn 

 winds ! their greenness is faded, their beauty is gone, and none so 

 poor as to do them reverence. Thus are we in greater things quite 

 too prone to forget past benefits when the benefactor can no longer 

 add new gifts to his old ones. 



As much as we make the fallen and faded leaves the emblem of 

 our frailty and nothingness, there are few, I imagine, who do not 

 look with longing for the bare trees to put on their fresh new 

 foliage in the spring-time. And it must be a dull soul indeed 



