180 THROUGH GLADE AND MEAD. 
I came near missing the little water starwort when 
in bloom, because of its inconspicuous flowers, which 
consist of a single stamen and a single ovary without 
calyx or corolla, almost hidden in the axil of one of the 
leaves. I look for it year after year in the same brook 
in which I first found it, and it never fails to appear. 
The song of Tennyson’s brook it has made its own in 
that one respect at least. 
More and more of the marsh plants are now coming 
into bloom, one of which deserves and attracts more 
than a passing interest. This is the pitcher-plant, named 
by Tournefort, the leading French botanist at the end 
of the seventeenth century, in honor of Dr. Sarrazin of 
Quebec, who first sent our species, Sarracenia purpurea, 
L., and a botanical account of it, to Europe. In a note 
to that charming work, ‘‘The Old Régime in Canada,”: 
by Francis Parkman, I find this brief account of Dr. 
Sarrazin, who was one of the few Frenchmen of a 
certain intellectual eminence then living in Canada. 
“Sarrazin, a naturalist as well as a physician, has left 
his name to the botanical genus Sarracenia, of which 
the curious American species, S. purpurea, the ‘ pitcher- 
plant,’ was described by him. His position in the colony, 
was singular and characteristic. He got little or no pay 
from his patients; and, though at one time the only 
genuine physician in Canada, he was dependent on the 
king for support. In 1699, we find him thanking his 
