SUMMER. 6 1 



cabbage, and lofty cat-tails by the thousand among the bristling bogs of 

 tussock-sedge and bulrush. Here are calamus patches, and alder thickets, 

 and sedges without number; and the prickly carex and blue-flag abound 

 on every side. There are galingales and reeds, and tall and graceful 

 rushes, turtle -head and jointed scouring grass, and horse-tail, besides a 

 host of other old acquaintances, whose faces are familiar, but whose names 

 I never knew. But they were all my friends in boyhood. I knew them 

 in the bud and in the blossom, and even in their winter skeletons, brown 

 and broken in the snow. Near by there is a ditch : you never would 

 know it, for it is completely hidden from view beneath an interlacing 

 growth of jewel-weed. But see that gorgeous mass of deep scarlet that 

 floods the farther bank ! Nowhere within a circuit of miles around is 

 there such a regal display of cardinal flowers as this : skirting the borders 

 of the ditch for rods and rods, clustering about a ruined, tumbling fence, 

 whose moss-grown pickets are almost hidden in the dense profusion of 

 bloom. 



Then there is its airy companion, the " touch-me-not," with its trans- 

 lucent, juicy stem, and its queer little golden flowers with spotted throats 

 — the " jewel-weed " we used to call it. I know not why, unless from the 

 magic of its leaf, which, when held beneath the water, was transformed to 

 iridescent frosted silver. We all remember its sensitive, jumping seed- 

 pods, that burst even at our approach for fear that we should touch 

 them ; but no one can fully appreciate the beauty of the plant who has 

 not seen its silvery leaf beneath the water. Here it justifies its name, 

 for it is indeed a jewel. 



How often in those olden times have I lain down among these bul- 

 rushes and sedges near the lily pond, and listened to the buzzing songs of 

 the crickets and the tiny katydids that swarmed the growth about me, 

 and filled the air with their incessant din. I remember the little colony 

 of ants that picked their way among the rushes ; that gauzy dragon-fly too, 

 that circled and dodged about the water's edge, now skimming close upon 

 the surface, now darting out of sight, or perhaps alighting on an overhang- 

 ing sedge, as motionless as a mounted specimen, with wings aslant and 

 fully spread. " Devil's darning-needles" they were called. The devil may 

 well be proud of them ; for darning-needles of such precious metals and 

 such exquisite design are rare indeed. They were of several sizes too. 

 Some were large, and flashed the azure of the sapphire ; others fluttered 

 by with smoky, pearly wings, and slender bodies glittering in the light like 



8* 



