THE QUEEN OF THE SWAMP 153 



columbines shake their heads to an invisible wind. 

 Here, too, you will find the Clematis verticillaris 

 trailing its blue blossoms over the ground or low 

 shrubs, and here a carpet of fringed polygalas. Here, 

 too, are pink lady's-slippers, and later the white, 

 red-eyed baneberries and the smooth, false foxglove. 

 It is a lovely cliff, extending along the mountain for 

 several miles, at times within a few rods of the high- 

 way, at times half a mile back, shadowed with 

 birches, chestnuts, maples, butternuts, white ash, 

 and evergreens, and always flecked and streaked 

 with cool, moist, green moss, and artlessly adorned 

 with fern and flower. It amuses me sometimes on a 

 summer day to see how many motors rip along the 

 highway, the occupants quite unaware this garden 

 runs beside them. But perhaps they would be in- 

 different to it if they did know it was there. 



Not many people, however, can remain indiffer- 

 ent to a showy lady's-slipper (Cypripedium specta- 

 bile). Any orchid commands respect from almost 

 anybody, and orchids, as a species, have com- 

 manded extravagant devotion from a few. Of all 

 our native New England orchids, of course, the 

 showy lady's-slipper is the most beautiful; it is, in- 

 deed, the queen of our wild flowers, more beautiful, 

 even, than the fringed gentian, and infinitely more 

 rare. Its peculiar habitat makes it extremely diffi- 

 cult of cultivation except by experts with facilities 

 to create the proper conditions of soil and moisture, 

 and in a wild state it seems to be as averse to main- 

 taining itself against the inroads of civilization — or 

 as unable to do so — as the beaver or the varying 

 hare. It is the secret queen of the deep swamps, 



