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Old Time Gardens 



calls it " the hateful Toad-flax," and old Manasseh 

 Cutler, in a curious mixture of compliment and slur, 

 "a common, handsome, tedious weed." It travels 

 above ground and below ground, and in some soils 

 will run out the grass. It knows how to allure the 

 bumblebee, however, and has honey in its heart. I 

 think it a lovely flower, though it is queer ; and it is 

 a delight to the scientific botanist, in the delicate 

 perfection of its methods and means of fertilization. 



The greatest beauty of this flower is in late au- 

 tumn, when it springs up densely in shaven fields. 

 I have seen, during the last .week in October, fields 

 entirely filled with its exquisite sulphur-yellow tint, 

 one of the most delicate colors in nature; a yellow 

 that is luminous at night, and is rivalled only by the 

 pale yellow translucent leaves of the Moosewood in 

 late autumn, which make such a strange pallid light 

 in old forests in the North — a light which dominates 

 over every other autumn tint, though the trees which 

 bear them are so spindling and low, and little noted 

 save in early spring in their rare pinkness, and in 

 this their autumn etherealization. And the Moose- 

 wood shares the mystery of the Butter-and-eggs as 

 well as its color. I should be afraid to drive or 

 walk alone in a wood road, when the Moosewood 

 leaves were turning yellow in autumn. I shall 

 never forget them in Dublin, New Hampshire, 

 driving through what our delightful Yankee chari- 

 oteer and guide called " only a cat-road." 



This was to me a new use of the word cat as a 

 praenomen, though I knew, as did Dr. Holmes and 

 Hosea Biglow, and every good New Englander, 



