WILD PASTURES 



centuries, frequenters of the Blue Hill 

 Reservation will note a broad expanse 

 of swamp land where once sparkled the 

 waters of this hundred-acre pond. For 

 the way of the bog is this. 



All along its under-water front the 

 obscure under-water weeds grow up and 

 die year after year, generation after 

 generation, forming fertile banks of 

 beautiful soft mud, into whose lower 

 depths the great thick rootstocks of the 

 pond-lilies push, and in which the fibrous 

 roots of the tape grass, the fresh-water 

 eel grass, find a hold. The growth and 

 decay of these, with the water shield, 

 with its jelly-protected foliage, the yel- 

 low dog-lily, and in lesser depths the 

 bulrush, add to the growing bank as 

 coral insects grow and die in tropic seas, 

 until it is near enough to the surface 

 for the pickerel weed to find roothold. 

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