2 RIVERBY 



low flower, Gray says, which grows in cold, wet 

 woods and bogs, — very beautiful and very rare. 

 Calypso, you know, was the nymph who fell in love 

 with Ulysses and detained him seven years upon her 

 island, and died of a broken heart after he left her. 

 I have a keen desire to see her in her floral guise, 

 reigning over some silent bog, or rising above the 

 moss of some dark glen in the woods, and would 

 gladly be the Ulysses to be detained at least a few 

 hours by her. 



I will describe her by the aid of Gray, so that if 

 any of my readers come across her they may know 

 what a rarity they have found. She may be looked 

 for in cold, mossy, boggy places in our northern 

 woods. You will see a low flower, somewhat like 

 a lady's-slipper, that is, with an inflated sac-shaped 

 lip; the petals and sepals much alike, rising and 

 spreading ; the color mingled purple and yellow ; the 

 stem, or scape, from three to five inches high, with 

 but one leaf, — that one thin and slightly heart- 

 shaped, with a stem which starts from a solid bulb. 

 That is the nymph of our boggy solitudes, waiting 

 to break her heart for any adventurous hero who 

 may penetrate her domain. 



Several of our harmless little wild flowers have 

 been absurdly named out of the old mythologies: 

 thus, Indian cucumber root, one of Thoreau's favor- 

 ite flowers, is named after the sorceress Medea, and 

 is called " medeola," because it was at one time 

 thought to possess rare medicinal properties; and 

 medicine and sorcery have always been more or less 



