THE WILD GARDEN. 165 
which I had never read—that the insect prisoners were not all 
victims, almost every pitcher disclosing one, two, or three larve 
which were entirely proof against the digestive arts of the leaf, 
and which in reality robbed the latter of its rightful prey. These 
larve I soon discovered to be those of a peculiar fly, doubtless a 
distinct species dependent upon the pitcher-plant, the transfor- 
mation being completed in the pitchers, wherein I found their 
chrysalides; and at length, after much search, my conjectures were 
verified by the discovery of a newly hatched fly 
(creeping up the dangerous tube, which had de- 
fied the escape of less knowing insects—an ac- 
complishment for which I doubt not he had 
been especially equipped by nature. 
Another conspicuous eccentricity is 
the Monotropa (we have been treated. 
to the beaker, here is the pipe as 
well), that pallid child of the dank _ 
woods that might well pass for a 
fungus did we not know that it carries 
a flower as botanically perfect as the 
laurel or the pyrola or any other of the 
great Heath family, to which it belongs. 
No discourse upon our notable wild 
flowers would be complete without re- 
calling the foxglove, whose tall sprays 
of tubular blossoms light up many a dark nook 
in the woods, and whose pure, even color always 
suggests to me the canary, even as the cardinal- 
flower invariably brings another ornithological 
parallel. Is it not to our flowers what the scar- 
let tanager is to our birds? But even as the tanager must yield 
the crown, as it were, to the tiny kinglet whose olive crest con- 
ceals the crowning touch of purest red among all our native | 
plumage, so must the cardinal make his prettiest bow to the hum- 
ble painted-cup, which boasts the brightest dab of red the wild) 
palette can show. 
oe 
ey 
SNEEZE-WEED. 
