THE WILD GARDEN. 



which I had never read that the insect prisoners were not all 

 victims, almost every pitcher disclosing one, two, or three larva 

 which were entirely proof against the digestive arts of the leaf, 

 and which in reality robbed the latter of its rightful prey. These 

 larvae I soon discovered to be those of a peculiar fly, doubtless a 

 distinct species dependent upon the pitcher-plant, the transfor- 

 mation being completed in the pitchers, wherein I found their 

 chrysalides ; and at length, after much search, my conjectures were 

 verified by the discovery of a newly hatched fly 

 creeping up the dangerous tube, which had de- 

 fied the escape of less knowing insects an ac- 

 complishment for which I doubt not he had 

 been especially equipped by nature. 



Another conspicuous eccentricity is 

 the Monotropa (we have been treated 

 to the beaker, here is the pipe as 

 well), that pallid child of the dank 

 woods that might well pass for a 

 fungus did we not know that it carries 

 a flower as botanically perfect , as the 

 laurel or the pyrola or any other of the 

 great Heath family, to which it belongs. 



No discourse upon our notable wild 

 flowers would be complete without re- 

 calling the foxglove, whose tall sprays 

 of tubular blossoms light up many a dark nook 

 in the woods, and whose pure, even color always 

 suggests to me the canary, even as the cardinal- 

 flower invariably brings another ornithological 

 parallel. Is it not to our flowers what the scar- 

 let tanager is to our birds? But even as the tanager must yield 

 the crown, as it were, to the tiny kinglet whose olive crest con- 

 ceals the crowning touch of purest red among all our native 

 plumage, so must the cardinal make his prettiest bow to the hum- 

 ble painted-cup, which boasts the brightest dab of red the wild 

 palette can show. 



SNEEZE-WEED. 



