36 JOURNAL AND PROCEEDINGS. 
shady recesses of the forest, exhibit the same sensibility to the 
lowering temperature of the September nights, and suddenly Jdleach 
or change to an interesting cream color ere they droop and vanish 
under the influence of the chill rains and gales of October. 
Just now the mimetic tendencies in nature are plainly manifested 
in the white flowers of the snake-head, which is a common growth in 
the shaded bogs of this vicinity There is an idea of mockery or 
derision conveyed to one’s mind on aclose scrutiny of this remarkable 
flower; and the remembrance of the bloom of the cyprepedium to an 
Indian moccasin is perhaps not less suggestive. Again a very slight 
exercise of the imaginative faculty is required to see in the flowers of 
the Fringed Orchis of the same bogs, the outlines and expression of 
a benign human countenance! Only yesterday the same mocking 
trait was very evident on a number of groups of Golden Rods on which 
those ligneous turbinate excresences, near the summit of the plant 
stem, had become guz¢e ved under the influence of the fervid solar rays 
of September, and assumed a most fraudulent “fruity ” appearance. 
These semblances made one think of the historical “apples of 
Sodom.” In clusters of these plants by the roadside fora distance 
of miles, about seven-tenths of the individual growths had been 
victimized by this supposed parasite. In one, also, if not in both of 
the two species of baneberry, act@a spicata, a similar humor of feign- 
ing seems predominant. In the white berried variety, the fruit and 
its mounting or arrangement, mimics the work of the skilled con- 
fectioner, and resembles the sugar-coated investiture on elaborate 
frost cake. What a ruby-like tint, resemblance, and suggestiveness 
is seen in the fruit of the Wahoo or exonymus, var obovatus, than 
which scarcely any substance can be more insipid to the taste. The 
luscious red, too, of the ground cherry, and of the du/cemara and 
perhaps some other members of. the Nightshade family, give a 
promise to the eye which is not carried out, or is even treacherous, 
to the gustatorial sense. The fruit of the Dog-wood, rhus venenata, 
has a close resemblance to that of the white currant bush, but at the 
same time is an acrid poison, yet at a certain time is utilized as food 
by the ruffled grouse, (and with impunity to the ornithic consumer). 
The coral ruby-like fruit of the arum (Ariszema) ¢77pAy//um is said to 
have a seductive look, and has been eaten by children with painful, 
if not with fatal results. 
