XV 



WHite OaKs and Gregor IVocKs 



I can recall to mind the stillest summer hours, in which 

 the grasshopper sings over the mulleins, and there is a valor in 

 that time the bare memory of which is armor that can laugh at 

 any blow of fortune.— ThorEau, Week on the Concord and 

 Merrimack Rivers. 



I HAD been on the trail for white Moccasin-Flowers 

 for years; and on June i6th a lad of White Oaks 

 Valley promised to guide me to the Forks of 

 Broad Brook, and show me a colony of absolutely 

 White Lady's Slippers. We arrived at the junction of 

 the Field Brook — where it crosses the White Oaks Road 

 near Richmond's Farm — and turned our horse's head 

 through the fields eastward along the rude loggers' path 

 travelled in winter. We were obliged to cross fields of 

 oats and potato vines in order to arrive on the summit 

 of these rounded hills. Here, amid the white birches 

 and sweet-fern bushes, we fastened our horse. Among 

 these ferns and briars I discovered five enormous 

 orange-yellow mushrooms, which, apparently, were of 

 recent growth. They were gorgeous to behold, and 

 smelled like new-made bread, yet they were extremely 

 poisonous. They were, upon examination, found to 

 spring from a socket, above which a ring encircled the 

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