STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 83 



pected finding of some rare plant will repay or prevent many a 

 disapointment. It is no small joy in April after wading through 

 snow in the woods to come out on the sunny side and to find 

 butterflies flitting about and the ground dotted with hepaticas in 

 full bloom, their delicate flowers in all shades from the pure 

 white up to a most beautiful blue ; or later to find by a babbling 

 brook on a wooded hillside a level plot of rich, damp soil filled 

 with plants of the yellow lady's slipper in full flower, so that 

 you pick all you can well carry and yet leave many more for the 

 next comer; or to search for years for the showy lady's-slipper 

 and then by a passing glance find a swamp by the roadside so 

 full of them in full blossom that you gather these largest and 

 most beautiful of our wild orchids literally by armfuls ; or in the 

 deep seclusion of a cedar swamp where the damp moss yields 

 like softest carpet to footfall to find by scores that rarest, dainti- 

 est orchid of them all, the beautiful calypso ; or once more in the 

 late fall, "When woods are bare and birds are flown," riding 

 along a country road suddenly to catch a glimpse of blue by the 

 roadside and to know that a flower long looked for in vain has 

 been found at last, the fringed gentian of which Bryant sings so 

 sweetly. Such experiences as these and others like, them are 

 like cold water to a thirsty soul 



"The source of an exquisite pleasure, 



The purest and sweetest that nature can yield." 



When one becomes fairly familiar with the plants of his own 

 locality, he may then set for himself the broader task of study- 

 ing the flora of the entire State. Maine is so large a State with 

 such varied conditions of soil and climate that it has a very rich 

 and abundant flora and one which invites and repays enthusias- 

 tic study. The twenty-five hundred or more miles of seacoast 

 fringed by inlets and projections and bordered by many islands, 

 the extensive river systems, the unnumbered lakes and ponds, the 

 bogs and marshes, the valleys, hills, mountains, the unique 

 position, the nortliern oceanic current that reaches our shores, 

 the southern slopes of many of our hills and valleys, — all these 

 give to Maine a range of plant life wonderfully varied and inter- 

 esting. To make a full study of all these plants and their locali- 

 ties would be a task too great for any one person, though it may 

 be very largely accomplished by combined efiFort such as the Jos- 



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