152 NATURE-STUDY REVIEW [13:4— April, 191 7 



clusters leaped for joy from their winter imprisonment into our 

 eager hands. 



A whole troop of flowers followed at once the lead of the arbutus. 

 The delicate spring beauty (Claytonia virginica) was indeed the 

 very first flower found and as such it stands the initial specimen 

 of my collection. Early in May in the glen high up the brook 

 appeared those showy three-rayed stars the white and red trilliums. 

 also dearly loved flowers of our childhood. What cared we that 

 they were not sweet-scented as we eagerly plucked them till our 

 little fingers could not clasp another stem. Then the yellow 

 adder tongue, yellow violets, wild oats, blood root and many others 

 kept me busy every morning "roasting" that taken in hunting the 

 previous afternoon. 



In the field toward the east there were large patches white as 

 snow of innocence, (Houstonia ccerulea) that pigmy Alpin-like flower 

 scarcely two inches high, and the swampy ground south of the field 

 was yellow with the marsh marigold, or cowslips (Caltha pahestris). 

 One can but feel a kind of pity for this pretty spring flower which 

 with all the beauty of its gay, golden sepals and large shining oval 

 leaves has begged the English language in vain for a true name. 

 Though often called marsh marigold it is no marigold nor related 

 to that family and it is no more a cowslip than a marigold. It does 

 not seem, however, to mind in the least the ignominy of these 

 borrowed names but embellishes swamps and ditches with its 

 golden cups early in May. 



For these first weeks on my "Trail" (which has proved to be a 

 long and devious one) all was fish that came to my net ; no matter 

 how common or insignificant the flower it was new to my pencil 

 and must take its place in my collection. 



The wood anemone, the blue, pink and white blossoms of the 

 hepatica, the buttercup — even the dandelion, the first one found 

 sat for its picture — its leaves still too small for pot greens. 



The first dandelion blossom of the season always reminds me of a 

 little incident I once heard related by the Superintendent of the 

 Hartford Asylum for the insane; how having plucked one in his 

 walk, the first of the season he had seen, he held it unconsciously in 

 his hand when he was called to help subdue a raving maniac, a 

 woman who was smashing everything possible in her room and 

 whom no one dared approach ; how unlocking the door he went in 

 and reached out toward her his hand in which he held the dandelion 



