64 SUMMER IN A BOG. 



So at once the search began; but that night 

 we drove back to town without having found it. 

 A few weeks afterward the search was resumed 

 and the flower found on the grounds of the Fish 

 Hatchery, the true Fringed Gentian. 



Then was there much sacrificing at the floral 

 shrine, of quoting Bryant and Helen Hunt Jack- 

 son, the prose of Miss Sedgwick, also, in "The 

 Boy of Mount Righi." There were drives in 

 the crisp, frosty mornings, for it was in Novem- 

 ber, the weather mild Indian summer, when it 

 was first found. Since then I have found it 

 plentifully in bloom in September, when not a 

 suspicion of frost could be detected on the 

 warm, bright day. 



Getting its name from King Gentius of 

 Ulyria, this lovely flower holds regal court, also, 

 in my strip of bog, the Bouquets of "ribbon" 

 having long since passed through some trans- 

 formations since I first beheld it. Riddell's and 

 the Bog Golden Rod, yellow, with their plumes, 

 now share the setting of the loom with the hues 

 of this queen : 



"Blue, blue, as if the sky let fall 

 A flower from its cerulean wall." 



A black soil, from which all mineral matter 

 — or nearly — has been leached, is the habitat 

 of the fringed gentian. In grassy tufts it rises 



