CALYPSO EOKEAI.IS. CALYPSO. I 35 



And looking at the treasure 'neath the tree, 

 The goddess' self I almost hope to see. 



" The tints of purple and the texture fine, 

 The curves of beauty shown in every line, 

 With fringes exquisite of golden hue, 

 Perfect the. wonders of the fairy shoe. 



'• The goddess surely must have been in haste. 

 Like Daphne fleeing when Apollo chased, 

 And leaving here her slipper by the way, 

 Intends to find it on another c:ay : 



"And will she come to seek it here or no ? 

 The day is lengthening, but I cannot go. 

 Until I see her bring the absent mate 

 Of this rare beauty, though the time is late. 



" I watch, but still no classic form I see, 

 Naught but the slipper 'neath the forest tree; 

 And so, for fear of some purloining elf. 

 The precious relic I secure myself." 



When, however, the plant is found in a spot it loves, the botan- 

 ist need not dally till the day is spent, and then be rewarded by 

 one only "dainty shoe." A correspondent of the writer, Mr. C. 

 C. Pringle, under date of April 30th, 1879, remarks: "There is 

 a good deal of Calypso scattered over northern Vermont and 

 adjacent regions. I have never found it except under the pro- 

 tection of TImja Occidentalis (which form the so-called Cedar- 

 Swamps in the north). In these cedar-swamps it is at home 

 where the trees are the oldest and largest. Where the shade is 

 so dense that not even the mosses have strength to crawl over 

 the surface ; often near dark and slow-flowing streams, but in 

 situations never, I think, overflowed ; in the black and ever 

 moist and cool mould, formed from the decaying fragments of 

 the cedars, this exquisite litde beauty lifts her modest head, and, 

 like Aplcctntm, its leaf is hyemal, appearing in October, and 

 dying away at the beginning of the succeeding summer. Its 

 flower bud is well developed in autumn, and thus the plant 

 flowers as early as the last of May, or with the apple trees." 



It was from the plant's solitary habit, blooming alone in beauty 

 away from all her floral sisters, that its name Calypso was sug- 



