THE FRINGED GENTIAN. 



which children, or tender maidens, or hooded monks, or mailed 

 knights, have had for these — 



" Emblems of the bright and better land." 



Our first plate represents, with an unequalled fidelity to both 

 nature and art, one of our most choice and beautiful autumn 

 flowers. Upon the stalks of smooth herbs, from one to two 

 feet high, with leaves set regularly opposite each other, the 

 flowers lift up their sky-blue cups, bordered with four expand- 

 ing, fringed lobes. In the buds the petals are folded and twisted 

 about each other, as is partly shown in the half-opened flowers 

 at the top of the plate. They may be looked for during Sep- 

 tember and October, in low places along meadow-brooks and by the 

 edges of swamps. They are rather common from New England 

 to Wisconsin and Kentucky, but rare northward or southward 

 of that region. This genus is a member of a large family 

 of related plants, mostly bearing brilliant and beautiful flowers. 

 Its name is said to have been derived from that of a king 

 of Illyria, Gentius, who lived one hundred and eighty years 

 B. C, and who, Pliny says, greatly prized, for its medicinal 

 virtues, one species of it, which grows in Alpine regions all 

 over Europe. 



So beautiful a flower would not escape the appreciative eye 

 of any true lover of Nature. Our American poets have made 

 it the fitting theme of some of their most charming lines. 

 Whittier uses it, as his wont is, to teach a deep lesson of 

 modest worth and gentle charity; Bryant, to paint a picture 

 of autumnal nature, and to find in it inspiration of upward- 

 looking hope for life's autumn days. 



