212 June Wild Thyme. 



he had studied it in Nature. Its spring colors, light 

 green leaves, and white flowers, are gay and pleasant. 

 As for the odor of the flowers, there are people who 

 detest the perfume of the rose, so that it is difficult 

 to please everybody. 



Most people like the fragrance of wild thyme. There 

 are often great quantities of it in dry, stony places, where 

 its tiny dull-green leaves make an agreeable sober fore- 

 ground color, not harshly interrupted by the modest 

 violet of the flowers. Its strong perfume is due in part 

 to the presence of camphor in the plant. It is beloved 

 of hares and bees, and the scent is so refreshing that it 

 will revive a weary or fainting person. It is constantly 

 used by the clever French cooks to give flavor to their 

 dishes. The poets have loved it since classic times, and 

 with reason, for there is a great charm in the union of 

 its modest appearance with so sweet and healthy a per- 

 fume. It is one of the humble plants which form the. 

 variegated carpet of the earth ; a plant to be crushed 

 under hoof and foot, yet so strong and spreading that it 

 is never seriously injured, and in return for much ill- 

 usage only yields its fragrance the more abundantly. 



The later weeks of June are remarkably rich in 

 flowers. The honeysuckle is then fully out (at least in 

 the Val Ste. Veroniqne). We have the creeping bugle 

 in abundance, with its fine blue corolla ; the germander 

 veronica, with its veined flowers of tender blue ; the 

 crosswort galium, the ' slender galingale ' of poetry, with 

 yellow flowers, honey-scented ; the emollient mallow ; 

 and the harsh thistle with its purple glories. It is 



