122 CVrRIPEDIUM CANDIDUM. WHITE MOCCASIN FLOWER. 



the kind referred to by Bryant in his touching poem, "The 

 Maiden's Sorrow" : 



«' Seven long years has the desert rain 



Dropped on the clods that hide thy face ; 

 Seven long years of sorrow and pain 

 I have thought of thy burial-place. 



"Thought of thy fate in the distant West, 

 Dying with none that loved thee near; 

 They who flung the earth on thy breast 

 Turned from the spot without a tear. 



" There, I think, on that lonely grave, 



Violets spring in the soft March shower ; 

 There, in the summer breezes, wave 

 Crimson phlox and moccasin flower." 



White flowers are generally selected as emblems of purity, 

 and are used as tributes alike at marriages and funerals, both 

 to the birth and to the death of love. The Cypripcdhun candi- 

 dum is our only white species, and whether it actually was or not 

 the "moccasin flower" in Bryant's mind, it is of all the most 

 fitted to deck a maiden's lonely grave. 



The white moccasin flower has been known to botanists only 

 within a > comparatively recent date. Muhlenberg, the distin- 

 guished Pennsylvanian, records it in his " Catalogue," published 

 in 1813, and gives Pennsylvania as the only State in which it was 

 then known to exist. Rafinesque, writing in 1826, gives Ohio in 

 addidon to Pennsylvania, and we see how limited must have been 

 the knowledge of it even in that dme. Dr. Asa Gray, in his 

 " Manual of Botany," says it is now found from Central New 

 York to Kentucky and Wisconsin. Of special locations, of 

 which we have records before us while writing, we find it is 

 found in Ohio, Nebraska, Southern Michigan, Iowa, Indiana and 

 Illinois. Its central home may perhaps be considered as Michi- 

 gan and Iowa, — at least in these States it grows in considerable 

 abundance. 



The distribution of orchids over the surface of the globe is one 

 of the interesting subjects just now specially attracting the atten- 



