292 THE RING OF NATURE 



stinking hellebore blooms every year before three 

 men in twenty venture into the woods after spring 

 flowers. The summer visitor sees only half its 

 beauty in the maturity of its fingered leaves, 

 and its triad of seed carpels on plates of purple- 

 tipped green. The green of its midwinter bur- 

 geoning is the palest in Nature and also the 

 most luminous. The setterwort seems now to 

 be holding fairy lamps above the hard-toothed 

 leaves of last year. The new hands are crumpled 

 most prettily like the hands of babies. Above 

 them come flower buds so globular that they seem 

 to hold a treasure more enormous than any other 

 flower. Even these are green when fully open, 

 and after such luminosity of green it would be 

 idle for the flower to attempt scarlet or brightest 

 blue as an advertisement. But who shall dare to 

 ask where are the insects at this time of year that 

 ought to come to the little forest of golden stamens 

 that the bell-like blossoms guard and exhibit ? 

 If a man should open a fancy wool shop under the 

 lee of some iceberg within the inmost polar ring 

 he would apparently have as much chance of 

 doing business as the setterwort has in the month 

 it selects for blossoming. 



You might think there were laurels growing here 

 and there in our wood. But if you will examine 

 one of these clumps of shiny evergreen leaves you 

 will find that they are borne aloft on long stems 

 from the ground that resemble in miniature the 

 trunks of palm trees. They belong to spurge 



