FIELD AND STUDY 



rimmed honey-wells, its five-pointed collar, its dus- 

 ter of golden anthers, and its delicate foliage and 

 purple steins. It bejewels the rocks; it loves the 

 rocks as the jewel-weed loves water. Our rock coryd- 

 alis also loves the rocks, but it is a far less highly 

 developed flower and has none of the columbine's 

 art; and the same is true of saxifrage and rock cress 



— all children of the rocks, but not "wildly wise " 

 and wildly beautiful like the columbine. Aquilegia, 



— eaglelike, — but its talons are tipped with honey, 

 and its crimson is the glow of the*cheek of May. It 

 holds aloft its nectarines like tiny bottles open at 

 the bottom into which the rains, cannot enter. Re- 

 verse its pendulous character and its grace is gone. 



Ah ! the world-old rocks with these living jewels in 

 their ears — how young they look! 



§ 

 Emerson in his "Journals " has a phrase about the 

 "shortco min gs of the universe." The excesses of the 

 universe are much more obvious: Nature's over- 

 flowing measures, her unloosened forces — the tor- 

 nado, the avalanche, the earthquake — destroying 

 with one hand what she builded with the other, the 

 devastation of flood and fire; in human history, 

 wars, pestilence, and famine; and, in the history of 

 the lower forms of life, the failure of natural checks 

 and balances — locusts, tent-caterpillars, gypsy- 

 moths, lemmings, and the like. But the shortcomings 

 of Nature are not so easily pointed out. Of course, 

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