FLOWERS AND INSECTS 127 



for instance, that had to be got for my 

 little group of minerals. Why epidote 

 more than rhodonite or dioptase, I do not 

 know, unless it be that the name happened 

 to be remembered from seeing a labeled 

 specimen in childhood. 



And so it was with the trillium. I had 

 never seen one, yet I cared a good deal 

 more for it than for a lilium. As I was 

 more than forty years old before I saw 

 one, there should have been a lack of en- 

 thusiasm in getting it ; but the exuberance 

 of youth came over me at the moment, 

 and I never coddled anything into health 

 with more care than I did that waxen flower 

 and its broad, frank setting, after I had 

 lodged it in a shady corner of my city 

 yard. Was it the name that made me like 

 it ? Trillium ! There is music in it ; there 

 is a sense of wildness ; it ripples on the 

 tongue ; it has cadence, and somehow it 

 suggests the woods. As in all spring 

 flowers, there is refinement in it, a delicacy 

 and modesty ; but, unlike most of the blos- 

 soms of its season, it has dignity and sub- 

 stance. Its petals are large for the time. 



