THe Lay of the Band 
botanize. Leave the collecting can at home, for one 
day at least, and wander forth, not to hunt, but to 
drift and float, or, if you run aground, to wade knee- 
deep in June. A botanist who is never poet misses 
as much in the out-of-doors as the poet who is never 
botanist. 
If there were no other flower in the month but the 
white water-lily, June would still be June. “Who can 
contemplate it,” exclaims Mr. Burroughs, “as it 
opens in the morning sun, and distills such perfume, 
such purity, such snow of petal, and such gold of 
anther, from the dark water and still darker ooze! 
How feminine it seems beside its coarser and more 
robust congeners, how shy, how pliant, how fine in 
texture and starlike in form!” 
How the water-lily and spatter-dock can grow from 
the same mud is past understanding. One has every 
grace, the other none. But the dock can live in 
stagnant water, which perhaps is a sort of compen- 
~ sation. 
And these two, for me, are always associated with 
magnolias, —Magnolia glauca,—and magnolias are 
associated with “ old, forgotten, far-off things.” Their 
absence from my swamps here is part of the price 
134 
