A LONG ISLAND MEADOW 



you observe that in this fern the stalk is usually 

 longer than the rest of the frond, and that in cer- 

 tain cases the segments have a curled-over ap- 

 pearance, partially accounted for when you dis- 

 cover that these curled-over ferns bear on their 

 backs the little round fruit-dots which are not 

 found on the other flatter fronds. Once you are 

 familiar with these distinguishing traits of the 

 marsh shield-fern, you are not likely to confuse 

 it with its equally ubiquitous kinsman, the New 

 York shield-fern. 



In and out among the ferns creep the cranberry- Cranber- 

 vines. An occasional rose-pink, four-cleft bios- 1US 

 som still nods from an erect, leafy stem, although 

 everywhere hang the green berries, some of them 

 already with sunburned cheeks. 



Here, too, we find that rarely lovely orchid, 

 the adder's mouth. The plant itself is smaller Adder's 

 than that of the grass-pink, but the rose-colored, 

 fragrant flower which usually nods alone from 

 the summit of the stem is quite as large as are 

 the blossoms of its neighbor. 



Far beneath the silvery pennons of the cotton- 

 grass, down in the black mud, perhaps in the Flowers of 

 water itself, grows a curious, pretty little plant, sun "° 

 the round-leaved sundew, with its rosette of glis- 

 tening, red-haired leaves and its unfolding crosier 

 of flower-buds, which open one at a time, and then 



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