MARCH. 



133 



allow myself could only determine. Here also was the 

 Kalni's yellow water lily with its diminutive flowers, not 

 much larger to the seeming, than the buttercup of the mead- 

 ows ; and Potamogctons, whose variety might employ a lover 

 of their forms for many a long day for his study ; and fring- 

 ing the bank with massive clusters of pale lilac purple, were 

 suspended in festoons over bush and brier, the beautiful 

 Mikania scandens^ flowers ; while the slanting rays of the 

 evening sun at length helped to render more iridescent the 

 lower portions of the stems of sundry gigantic specimens of 

 Scirpus, those bayonet rushes, and greater club rushes and 

 similar Cyperaceous plants, which delight in deep muddy 

 places on still and gentle streams. It was here too that the 

 roseate flowered Althaea (Hibiscus virginicus, L. ) is found, as 

 I had occular proof on visiting a spot by the river bank on 

 the next day ; and scattered at intervals along the entire reach 

 of the stream may be traced noble specimens of the sugar 

 maple (^^cer saccharinum), rearing themselves from seeds 

 wafted by the river itself from the more interior regions, 

 amidst which it takes its rise in tributaries to its waters. 



A thousand thanks, Mr. Russell, for your " story of a little 

 brake," spun out none too long for us, and we hope none too 

 long for our readers. Truly we are transported back into 

 those earlier years you so freshly bring to mind, when every 

 balmy day of summer and every pleasant morn of autumn 

 found us sauntering through the once rich flora of Cambridge 

 and its adjacent villages for specimens of the " earliest golden 

 rod," the " first flowering aster," and other plants you have 

 enumerated as enriching the meadows and pastures of old 

 Concord. Full many a species does our own herbarium 

 (long laid aside for more active duties) contain, though by 

 no means to be named with your own rich, varied and ex- 

 tensive collection : yet, poor as it is, we never turn over its 

 sheets, but we revel in dream land — flitting over green fields, 

 dewy meadows and mossy banks, strewn with those favorite 

 New England flowers, now driven out from the abodes of 

 men, neglected, forgotten, and their places usurped by those 



