154 IN BERKSHIRE FIELDS 



and those of us who are its worshipers are yearly 

 growing more and more loath to disclose its hiding- 

 place to alien eyes, not from any desire to maintain 

 an exclusive aristocracy, but because we have 

 learned from bitter experience that a showy lady's- 

 slipper garden publicly discovered is a garden gone, 

 to a greater degree, even, than in the case of the 

 arbutus. We guard our secret to guard the very 

 life of the plants. 



The Cypripedium spectabile comes into flower 

 with us about the middle of June, and very often 

 while the swamps are still wet. (I am aware that 

 the wild-flower manuals say the last of June, but 

 if you search for it then in our swamps you will 

 generally find but dried or faded flowers.) You 

 search for it clad in hip rubber boots, and you find 

 it, if at all, not without tears (ea as in rip) and 

 sweat. Entering the swamp by a dim trail, the 

 remains, perhaps, of an old logging-road, you pass 

 borders of tall, fragrant brake and gracefully bend- 

 ing sprays of Solomon's seal, some of them six feet 

 long. At first the woods are tolerably dry, and 

 meadow-lilies {Lilium canadensis) grow gaily in the 

 gloom. Then the dim trail gradually vanishes, by 

 what seem like two or three forks, each leading to 

 nowhere. You are in a tangle of thorny, ripping 

 blackberry canes, through which you tear your way 

 to plunge almost hip deep into black muck, or to 

 find yourself full in the midst of a great bed of royal 

 osmunda ferns. Now every vista of the woods 

 looks like every other vista. Nowhere does the 

 sense of direction fade so quickly as in a dense 

 swamp. Trees are all around you, hornbeams, 



