20 RIVERBY 



pleasing; it has a faded, indefinite sort of look. 

 Its color is not strong and positive enough to be 

 effective in the mass, yet each single flower is a gem 

 of itself. The color of the common violet is much 

 more firm and pronounced; and how many a grassy 

 bank is made gay with it in the mid- May days! 

 We have a great variety of violets, and they are 

 very capricious as to perfume. The only species 

 which are uniformly fragrant are the tall Canada 

 violet, so common in our northern woods, — white, 

 with a tinge of purple to the under side of its 

 petals, — and the small white violet of the marshy 

 places; yet one summer I came upon a host of the 

 spurred violet in a sunny place in the woods which 

 filled the air with a delicate perfume. A handful 

 of them yielded a perceptible fragrance, but a sin- 

 gle flower none that I could detect. The Canada 

 violet very frequently blooms in the fall, and is 

 more fragrant at such times than in its earlier 

 blooming. I must not forget to mention that deli- 

 cate and lovely flower of May, the fringed polygala. 

 You gather it when you go for the fragrant, showy 

 orchis, — that is, if you are lucky enough to find it. 

 It is rather a shy flower, and is not found in every 

 wood. One day we went up and down through 

 the woods looking for it, — woods of mingled oak, 

 chestnut, pine, and hemlock, — and were about giv- 

 ing it up when suddenly we came upon a gay com- 

 pany of them beside an old wood-road. It was as 

 if a flock of small rose- purple butterflies had alighted 

 there on the ground before us. The whole plant 



