252 f>e CSfarlren's Storg. 



tuberosa) was gay a fortnight since with orange 

 corymbs. It is among the brightest of summer 

 flowers and the most brilliant of the extensive 

 milkweed tribe that crowds and perfumes the 

 waste places during summer. Leaving the sandy 

 places where it grows, I find the wild rose still 

 in blossom. How full the aroma held by its 

 few single pink petals a freshness and pungency 

 its cultivated sisters do not possess for all their 

 double cups and titled names ! In the swamp 

 further on, where virgin's - bower and purple 

 nightshade wreath their festoons, there streams 

 a veritable sunset of color. The gorgeous car- 

 dinal-flower {Lobelia cardinalis) is in full pano- 

 ply of bloom the most vivid red of the year, a 

 red that seems endowed with conscious life, so 

 glowing is its fire. Growing near it I find the 

 great blue lobelia (L. syphiliticd), a conspicuous 

 flower, and more rarely its white form, with an 

 occasional plant of the fragrant snake -head 

 (Chelone glabra). 



Something fascinating there is about a swamp 

 its rare flora, its gloom in daylight, its fresh- 

 ness in drought, its ever-present mystery. You 

 can not grasp it as you can the dry woodland. 

 The very birds are evasive, and its flora leads 

 one deeper and deeper into the tangle where the 

 woodcock springs from the thickets of jewel- 



