50 BEES. 



hear the low hum of his plumage, as if the web of 

 every quill in his great wings vibrated in his strong, 

 level flight. I watched him as long as my eye 

 could hold him. When he was fairly clear of the 

 mountain he began that sweeping spiral movement ir 

 which he climbs the sky. Up and up he went with* 

 out once breaking his majestic poise till he appeared) 

 to sight some far-off alien geography, when he 

 bent his course thitherward and gradually vanished 

 in the blue depths. The eagle is a bird of large 

 ideas, he embraces long distances ; the continent is 

 his home. I never look upon one without emotion; 

 I follow him with my eye as long as I can. I 

 think of Canada, of the Great Lakes, of the Rocky 

 Mountains, of the wild and sounding sea-coast. 

 The waters are his, and the woods and the inacces- 

 sible cliffs. He pierces behind the veil of the storm, 

 and his joy is height and depth and vast spaces. 



We go out of our way to touch at a spring run in 

 the edge of the woods, and are lucky to find a single 

 scarlet lobelia lingering there. It seems almost to 

 light up the gloom with its intense bit of color. Be- 

 side a ditch in a field beyond we find the great blue 

 lobelia {Lobelia syphilitica), and near it amid the 

 weeds and wild grasses and purple asters the most 

 beautiful of our fall flowers, the ^ringed gentian,. 

 What a rare and delicate, almost aristocratic look the 

 gentian has amid its coarse, unkempt surroundings e 

 It does not lure the bee, but it lures and holds every 

 passing human eye. If we strike through the corner 

 of yonder woods, where the ground is moistened by 

 hidden springs and where there is a little opening 

 amid the trees, we shall find the closed gentian, a 

 rare flower in this locality. I had walked this way 



