THE FLOWERS OF EARLY JUNE. II. 161 
all readiness therefore, where his experiences lay out of 
my range. 
On June 13, 1852, he writes: “The Slax her- 
bacea, L., carrion flower, a rank green vine, with long 
peduncled umbels, small greenish or yellowish flowers, 
and tendrils just opening, at the Miles swamp. It smells 
exactly like a dead rat in the wall, and apparently at- 
tracts flies like carrion. I find small gnats in it. A very 
remarkable odor. A single minute flower, in an umbel, 
open, will scent a whole room. Nature imitates all 
things in flowers. They are at once the most beautiful 
and the ugliest objects, the most fragrant, and the most 
offensive to the nostrils.” 
A glance in my own diary for 1882 shows me that 
I found it in bloom on June 12th, and I think I can 
appreciate fully all that he says of it. The paragraph 
is not unmeaning to me, as it necessarily must be if I 
had not seen and smelt the flower. 
Under the same date the next year I find this pas- 
sage, which reminds me of my first conscious sight of a 
male rose-breasted grosbeak: ‘What was that rare and 
beautiful bird in the dark woods under the Cliffs, with 
black above and white spots and bars, a large triangular 
blood-red spot on breast, and sides of breast and be- 
neath, white? Note, a warble, like the oriole, but softer 
and sweeter. It was quite tame. Probably a rose- 
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