i 5 4 NATURE-STUDY REVIEW [13:4— April, 191 7 



morning. But lo ! in the morning every blossom had dropped off 

 and lay floating on the surface of the water. They were all perfect , 

 however, and it seemed quite right and an easy thing to do to paint 

 the little plant and put a flower at each place where it belonged, 

 copying them as they lay on the water. They had to be turned 

 over face up and it went on finely — only as I discovered afterwards 

 I put every flower wrong side up, the largest, lavender striped 

 petal belonging above instead of below as I painted it ! 



As the days grew longer and the sun warmer bolder and more 

 brilliant flowers appeared. Champions of this movement were 

 that pert, little, black parson Jack-in-the pulpit and hobnobbing 

 with him without color prejudice the pale and graceful false lily of 

 the valley, Clintonia bor edits daring to be false face to face with 

 his reverence. There was a wood path leading I know not where 

 (that is the charm of a wood path the no end of possibilities as to 

 where it may take you and what you might find if you were to follow 

 it long enough) a widish, grass-grown, shadowy path leading up in 

 the hilly woods to the east and each side of it as spring advanced 

 was a flower garden where I revelled for many a day before its 

 treasures were exhausted. One day — where to the left of the wood 

 road was a deep glen — I shall never forget how a bit of lovely rose 

 color caught my eye and beckoned me to the glen; how I sprang 

 down the steep bank and found that orchid loved and coveted of 

 botanists, the pink lady's slipper, (Cyprypedium acaulis) not one 

 but many, here and there one, all around. Near them the ground 

 was covered with the shining leaves and quaint flowers of the fringe 

 polygala, the largest species of the polygala family I have found. 

 By the side of the path or in it the northern columbine (Aquilegia 

 Canadensis) sent up its shafts of red and yellow blossoms while all 

 around the ground was dotted With the white four-sepaled flowers 

 of the low Cornel or bunchberry — a bunch of red berries when ripe 

 — sweetish and harmless — not quite so good as they look as every 

 child knows. Still more deceptive than the fruit is the flower — this 

 large white four sepaled flower being in fact not the flower at all 

 but a showy involucer around the minute real flowers that bear the 

 berries. 



And each one of these countless wood flowers — a thing of beauty 

 that would have graced the garden of a mansion growing here in 

 careless profusion to grace a forgotten wood path where nobody 

 every went ! Ah ! do not be too sure of that ! Somewhere away 



