Music of the Wild 



so brilliant, however, as the pageant of color 

 marching adown the old snake-fence. 



To the whites of alder and the pink of wild 



rose are added the lavender of beard's tongue, 



Wild the blue of bellflower, nodding plumy heads of 



Lilies meac i ow rue? an( j j scattered here and there, wild 



tiger lilies. These bear the palm for brilliant color. 



The flowers are so artistic that decorators almost 



have worn them out for art purposes, and yet no 



one has reproduced them with all the beauty of 



one wild bed I know. 



These lilies grow in rather damp, sandy places, 

 sometimes in real swamp, sometimes on land that 

 would seem too high and dry for them. They 

 have brilliant orange-red faces, thickly freckled 

 with brown. The bud is a long point, the half- 

 unfolded bloom a trumpet, the full-blown flower 

 curls its petals so far back it almost turns inside 

 out and fully displays the grace of the long sta- 

 mens and pistil. In damp ground the flower color 

 is paler, and the stems and buds longer. They 

 are of deeper red and low r er growth in dry loca- 

 tions; but in half moist, half sandy soil they reach 

 perfection. 



For three years from passing railroad trains 



A Moving I had seen the finest bed of these lilies of all my 



Flower-bed ex p er i ence> on l an( J owned by the company, just 



inside the fence enclosing rather deep woods, a 



mile or two below the village of Ceylon, beside the 



202 



