A SHARP LOOKOUT 29 



ing or climbing stem, its glossy, deep-green, heart- 

 shaped leaves, its clustering umbels of small green, 

 ifih yellow flowers, making it very pleasing to the 

 eye; but to examine it closely one must positively 

 hold his nose. It would be too cruel a joke to 

 offer it to any person not acquainted with it to 

 smell. It is like the vent of a charnel-house. It 

 is first cousin to the trilliums, among the prettiest 

 of our native wild flowers, and the same bad blood 

 crops out in the purple trillium or birthroot. 



Nature will include the disagreeable and repul- 

 sive also. I have seen the phallic fungus growing 

 in June under a rosebush. There was the rose, 

 and beneath it, springing from the same mould, was 

 this diabolical offering to Priapus. With the per- 

 fume of the roses into the open window came the 

 stench of this hideous parody, as if in mockery. I 

 removed it, and another appeared in the same place 

 shortly afterward. The earthman was rampant and 

 insulting. Pan is not dead yet. At least he still 

 makes a ghastly sign here and there in nature. 



The good observer of nature exists in fragments, 

 a trait here and a trait there. Each person sees 

 what it concerns him to see. The fox-hunter knows 

 pretty well the ways and habits of the fox, but on 

 any other subject he is apt to mislead you. He 

 comes to see only fox traits in whatever he looks 

 upon. The bee-hunter will follow the bee, but 

 lose the bird. The farmer notes what affects his 

 crops and his earnings, and little else. Common 

 people, St. Pierre says, observe without reasoning* 



