ORCHID-HUNTING 159 



path would disappear from sight in masses of hud- 

 sonia and sand-myrtle. Everywhere above the 

 blueberry bushes flamed the regal Turk's-cap lily, 

 with its curved fire-red petals. On high the stalks 

 towered above a tangle of lesser plants bearing 

 great candelabra of glorious blossoms. 



Finally, we came to a little ditch which some for- 

 gotten cranberry-grower had dug through the barrens 

 to a long-deserted bog. On its side grew the rare 

 thread-leafed sundew, with its long thread-like 

 leaf covered with tiny red hairs and speckled thick 

 with glittering drops of dew; while here and there 

 little insects, which had alighted on the sweet, fatal 

 drops, were enmeshed in the entangling hairs. Well 

 above the line of strangled insects on which it fed, 

 a pink blossom smiled unconcernedly. Like the at- 

 tractive lady mentioned in Proverbs, her house goes 

 down into the chambers of death. 



As we followed the dike, the air was sweet with the 

 perfume of white alder. The long stream of brown 

 cedar-water was starred white with gleaming, fra- 

 grant water-lilies. In a marsh by the ditch grew 

 clumps of cotton-grass or pussytoes, each stem of 

 which bore a tuft of soft brown wool, like the down 

 which a mother rabbit pulls from her breast when 

 she lines her nest for her babies. 



At last we came to the abandoned cranberry bog. 

 Suddenly the Botanist jumped into the ditch, 

 splashed his way across, and disappeared in the bog, 

 waving his arms over his head. I found him on his 

 knees in the wet sphagnum moss, chanting ecstati- 



