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botanize. Leave the collecting can at home, for one 

 day at least, and wander forth, not to hunt, but to 

 drift and float, or, if you run aground, to wade knee- 

 deep in June. A botanist who is never poet misses 

 as much in the out-of-doors as the poet who is never 

 botanist. 



If there were no other flower in the month but the 

 white water-lily, June would still be June. "Who can 

 contemplate it," exclaims Mr. Burroughs, "as it 

 opens in the morning sun, and distills such perfume, 

 such purity, such snow of petal, and such gold of 

 anther, from the dark water and still darker ooze! 

 How feminine it seems beside its coarser and more 

 robust congeners, how shy, how pliant, how fine in 

 texture and starlike in form ! " 



How the water-lily and spatter-dock can grow from 

 the same mud is past understanding. One has every 

 grace, the other none. But the dock can live in 

 stagnant water, which perhaps is a sort of compen- 

 sation. 



And these two, for me, are always associated with 

 magnolias, — Magnolia glauca, — and magnolias are 

 associated with " old, forgotten, far-off things." Their 

 absence from my swamps here is part of the price 



134 



