A YEAR IN THE FIELDS 



dicentra, commonly called squirrel corn, 

 has nearly the same perfume, and its ra- 

 cemes of nodding whitish flowers, tinged 

 with red, are quite as pleasing to the eye, 

 but it is a shyer, less abundant plant. When 

 our children go to the fields in April and 

 May, they can bring home no wild flowers 

 as pleasing as the sweet English violet, and 

 cowslip, and yellow daffodil, and wallflower ; 

 and when British children go to the woods 

 at the same season, they can load their 

 hands and baskets with nothing that com- 

 pares with our trailing arbutus, or, later 

 in the season, with our azaleas ; and when 

 their boys go fishing or boating in summer, 

 they can wreathe themselves with nothing 

 that approaches our pond-lily. 



There are upward of forty species of 

 fragrant native wild flowers and flowering 

 shrubs and trees in New England and New 

 York, and, no doubt, many more in the 

 South and West. My list is as follows : — 



White violet ( Viola blandd). 



Canada violet ( Viola Canadensis). 



Hepatica (occasionally fragrant). 



Trailing arbutus i^Epigcea repens). 



Mandrake {Podophyllum peltahim). 



Yellow lady's-slipper ( Cypripedimn parviflorum). 



Purple lady's-slipper {Cypripedium acaule). 



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