WHITE 



the smallest members of the Parsley family. It is only common 

 in certain localities, being found in abundance in the neighbor- 

 hood of Washington, where its flowers appear as early as March. 



EARLY EVERLASTING. PLANTAIN-LEAVED EVERLASTING. 



Antennaria plantaginifolia. Composite Family (p. 13). 



Stems. Downy or woolly, three to eighteen inches high. Leaves. 

 Silky, woolly when young ; those from the root, oval, three-nerved ; those on 

 the flowering stems, small, lance-shaped. Flower-heads. Crowded, clus- 

 tered, small, yellowish-white, composed entirely of tubular flowers. 



In early spring the hillsides are whitened with this, the earli- 

 est of the everlastings. 



SPRING BEAUTY. 



Claytonia Virginica. Purslane Family. 



Stem. From a small tuber, often somewhat reclining. Leaves. Two ; 

 opposite, long and narrow. Flowers. White, with pink veins, or pink with 

 deeper-colored veins, growing in a loose cluster. Calyx. Of two sepals. 

 Corolla. Of five petals. Stamens. Five. Pistil. One, with style three- 

 cleft at apex. 



So bashful when I spied her, So breathless when I passed her, 



So pretty, so ashamed ! So helpless when I turned 



So hidden in her leaflets And bore her struggling, blushing, 



Lest anybody find : Her simple haunts beyond ! 



For whom I robbed the dingle, 



For whom betrayed the dell, 



Many will doubtless ask me, 



But I shall never tell ! 



Yet we are all free to guess and what flower at least in the 

 early year, before it has gained that touch of confidence which 

 it acquires later is so bashful, so pretty, so flushed with rosy 

 shame, so eager to defend its modesty by closing its blushing 

 petals when carried off by the despoiler as the spring beauty ? 

 To be sure, she is not ' ' hidden in her leaflets, ' ' although often 

 seeking concealment beneath the leaves of other plants but 

 why not assume that Miss Dickinson has availed herself of some- 

 thing of the license so freely granted to poets especially, it 

 seems to me to poets of nature ? Perhaps of this class few are 

 more accurate than she, and although we wonder at the sudden 

 blindness which leads her to claim that 



Nature rarer uses yellow 

 Than another hue 



3 2 



