MEAT EATING PLANTS 99 



as deeply as inanimates could war against the flesh, but the twin 

 guardians, knowledge and care, gave them a losing battle. 



The discovery of a thicket of sweet fern in the meadow, 

 (thresholding the smoker's paradise of the farmer boy) gave our 

 youngest as great a thrill as the blare of the siren calliope heralding the 

 May circus that periodically interfered with spring planting. Here 

 the parasitical dodder relentlessly throttles to death the staff which 

 aided it to climb upward toward the life-giving sunlight, exactly y 

 undeveloped humans shoulder ride and crush their fellows. There 

 also flourished the bindweed, the wild morning glory and patches 

 of chokeberries. 



Water Plants. 



We lined the banks of the brook that ran through the centre 

 of the meadow with iris, flagroot and such other water plants as we 

 could collect* Great masses of mint and cress edged its borders 

 and in a small pool were grown Egyptian lotus and the Victoria Re- 

 gia, the largest leaves seemingly strong enough to bear the weight 

 of a child. Close by were yellow and red wild lilies, pink marsh- 

 mallow, with its delicate and profuse bloom, also grew to perfection, 

 and could be seen three fields away. 



Here was the bright orange variety of milkweed as well 

 as the silk-podded, which is today being experimented with along 

 rubber producing lines, while black alder, dogwood, wild aster and 

 Joe-pie-weed made a very thicket of blooms. W T hen man digs deeply, 

 he will find the word weed a misnomer. But this meao^pw was, not 

 all flowers ; in one corner was a patch of horseradish and near the 

 wall a surplus row of rhubarb, which in early spring we forced with 

 a manure mulch and enclosed within headless and footless barrels. 

 From that same State microbiologist we learned how apogamy or 

 panthenogenesis of plant life was well exampled in the green 

 algae that scummed a stagnant pool in a corner of our meadow, and 

 could soon classify the interesting forms of oogamous, thallophytic 

 plants which grew in abundance in odd corners, on dead stumps and 

 in waste places. 



Bogland. 



In one corner of the meadow was a bog ; here the stream divided 

 and trickled more slowly. A bogless farm may mean better farming, 

 but to us it would have meant absence of the cheery peep of the rana, 

 and conditions and varieties in plant life that mere money could not 

 buy. 



Meat Eating Plants. 



At the edge of the little stream grew two kinds of meat eaters 

 the pitcher; whose victims were inveigled to a watery grave, and 

 the hairy, viscous deluged sundews, whose gladsome hand of greet- 

 ing swiftly turned to a throttling hand of death. 



