218 WOODLAND IDYLS. 



woodlands from mid-July to October, I inhale 

 many an odor, but none more pleasing than that 

 which comes to me from this Composite. There 

 is nothing like it in my category of smells. Once 

 known it is never forgotten and each season I 

 greet it with ever growing delight. If there is 

 any other odor which it recalls, it is that of the 

 earth, earthy on the first days of the great 

 awakening. Then the moistened leaves and mold 

 give up from many a woodland surface the quin- 

 tessence of herbs and grass and flowers long since 

 dead and forgotten. But the odor of the ever- 

 lasting is that of a living thing which I can 

 gather and put into uiy pocket where for months 

 it will exhale its fragrance. 



A plant twelve to eighteen inches in height, it 

 flourishes best in poor soil on the sunny slopes 

 of old fields and pastures. There through the 

 months of summer is its odor distilled, reaching 

 perfection only in autumn after the hoar frost 

 has lent its leaven for a perfect ripeness. Not 

 especially showy or attractive is the plant, but 

 loose branching, growing in small clumps, with 

 alternate linear sessile leaves and a corymb of 

 cone-shaped whitish heads. The stems and un- 

 der side of leaves are clothed with a dense hoary- 

 white appressed pubescence and this, together 

 with the odor, should make it easily known. 

 Where the plant is plentiful this odor pene- 

 trates the air for rods around, and is often borne 



