176 STARLIGHT AND SUNSHINE, 
have also found a clump of fire-weed plants which have pure 
white blossoms, which I have plucked for three years. I have 
come across no one who has ever seen the like—have you?” 
Yes, my friend, I have. There are a whole 
brood of them. Their whiteness is only skin-deep, 
for they are the black sheep in Dame Nature’s 
household. But she discountenances their pranks, 
and, as a rule, stirs herself to head off their mis- 
chief. It must be admitted, too, that they occa- 
sionally put on a very pretty face to 
cover their waywardness, and their 
lives would prove harmless if the 
evil “culturists” would only cease to 
play the devil with them; for it is 
from scions such as these that our 
prized “varieties” are begotten. In 
a burned mountainous tract I once 
found a number of white Zfzlodcum 
such as my friend describes, and I have 
met with them occasionally since in my 
walks. It is a lapse in the plant that is im- 
itated in various other species — abnormal 
freaks, analogous to the albino among ani- 
mals, which is recognized as a degenerate type. 
For years I saw from my studio window an al- 
most pure white English sparrow. I have seen a 
white robin, a very pale bluebird, and even as I 
write a snowy pink-eyed squirrel is roving among 
the trees near my country home. 
In addition to the fire-weeds, I have found albinos 
of red clover, closed gentian, purple- flowering rasp- 
FIRE-LILIES. berry, blueflag, burdock, purple Zupator/um, lupine, blue 
violet, and bird-foot violet, and have heard of a white 
cardinal-flower and white fire-lily. But the prettiest of all these 
wayward children is the white-fringed gentian. I know a certain 
plant which every year sends up its candelabra of snowy blossoms, 
