JUNE, JULY, AUGUST, AND SEPTEMBEH. 169 



mon, in very common places. One does not need to 

 looh for the soft plumes of the meadow-sweet in the 

 moist nooks of the highways among the White Hills 

 during the early summer ; they are before one's eyes 

 everywhere. Damp ground or dry, it is all the same ; 

 there is the pretty bush with its plume of pinkish-white 

 flowers directly before us. I find it, too, quite as com- 

 mon in the Berkshire country ; and Dora Read Good- 

 ale says : 



"... she follows every turn 

 With spires of closely clustered bloom. 

 And all the wildness of the place, 

 The narrow pass, the rugged ways. 

 But give her larger room. 



" And near the unfrequented road, 

 By waysides scorched with barren heat. 

 In clouded pink or softer white 

 She holds the summer's generous light — 

 Our native meadow-sweet ! " 



But it was a ]^ew England girl who wrote this, and 

 very true it is so far as New England is concerned ; 

 but look for the flower in the vicinity of Lake George, 

 and the poetry does not apply; 



Hardback or Hardback, or steeple bush, is another 



steeple Bush. Spirma just a little different from 

 SpircBatomentom. ^neadow-sweet. The flowers are pink- 

 er, the plume is perpendicular and sharp-pointed, the 



under side of the leaves and also the brown stems are 

 12 



