132 THE MAGAZINE OF HORTICULTURE. 



REAU, prepared with the artistic skill which the members of 

 his family so well understand. An enthusiastical botanical ac- 

 quaintance, lately coming into possession of one of these 

 Concord specimens, thus speaks — " W. brought me a most 

 beautiful specimen of Lygodium palmatum ; it was nearly 

 four feet long and preserved in a fine manner." 



You will readily understand, Mr. Editor, how your friend, 

 the narrator of this (perhaps, tediously long drawn) story of 

 a little brake, did not delay in culling many a fair and perfect 

 specimen and transferring it to his collecting vasculum. And 

 from what I know of your own tastes and the satisfaction, 

 a recollection of your collecting of the plants of Cambridge 

 gave you in former days, I am persuaded that you can easily 

 understand why the sixteenth day of August, 1854, was a 

 day to be remembered with satisfaction and pleasure. 



The peculiar natural features of Concord are not however 

 to be seen by a glance at its landscape, nor from a ramble 

 over its varied surface : but one must make a voyage on the 

 usually calm and smooth bosom of its stream, as it winds its 

 way through the meadows which lie on its banks. This 

 tour of discovery into unknown regions of fairy land had 

 been long the prime wish of my heart ever since Hawthorne 

 sojourned in the old Manse near which it flows, and passed 

 whole days in some skiff with a choice companion or two on 

 its waters ; or enjoyed its solitude on its picturesque shores. 

 Embarking in a similar skiff with him, who has shown him- 

 self equally experienced in fresh water craft as he is ingen- 

 ious in the details of a solitary rural life, I was severally in- 

 troduced by Thoreau to the aquatics which grew upon, and 

 near, and under the stream. Now we saw myriads of the 

 white water lily closing their petals as the sun had passed 

 his meridian height, and deep fringes of Pontederia, whose 

 rich blue flowers surpass even the orient hyacinth : and Poly- 

 gonums, from the acrid water-pepper to the richer and bolder 

 spikes of those species which affect tbe deeper parts of the 

 river, and one particular kind new to me, and considered a 

 little known or undescribed species by my guide and friend, 

 but which closer and longer examination than I was able to 



