THE MONTH OF YELLOW FLOWERS 



at a touch; and thus intriguing every 

 passer-by into sowing its crop, it earns 

 the name unfairly borne by the innocent 

 yellow toadflax snapdragon, which snaps 

 only at bumblebees. 



Gayly in possession of the fields, black- 

 eyed Susan, known to the farmer as "that 

 confounded yellow bull's-eye," is holding 

 her own, prepared to resist to the utmost 

 the onslaught of the goldenrod, which 

 presumes to unfurl in summer the banners 

 of fall. The clear yellow evening prim- 

 rose, scion of one of our very best old 

 English families, associates democratically 

 with a peasant mullein stalk, canary- 

 flecked, since they both fancy sun and 

 sand. Magnificent sometimes upon the 

 sand banks rises a clump of that copper- 

 in-the-sunshine flower, the butterfly weed, 

 soon to become as fugitive as our fair, lost 

 trailing arbutus, the cardinal, and the 

 fringed gentian, if its lovers do not woo 

 it less selfishly. All beauty refuses cap- 

 tivity. In upland meadows the orange 

 hawkweed is afoot, waving its delirious- 

 colored "paint brush" wantonly amid the 

 pasture grass in the light hours, but folding 

 it at sunset, no sipper of the dews. Brook 



5 [39] 



