Music of the Wild 



^\'aved leases a foot and a half across. I was ac- 

 customed to stems of from six to nine inches in 

 length and lea^■es of eight-inch diameter. As a 

 finishing toncli, beneath the fern, with fuzzy leaf 

 of 2)eculiar sliape that could not l)e called round 

 because it was A^•ider than long, and deeply cut 

 AV'here the stem joined, and with bell-shaped, ma- 

 roon-coloi'ed cup blooming so close the root that 

 1 had to remove the dry leaves to earth to find the 

 flower, grew wild ginger. I examined this partic- 

 ularly ])ecanse I know a writer who lias the hardi- 

 hood to com})are this grimy little burrower of the 

 soil with })apaw bloom, that lias six artistically 

 cut petals, each of which is of much richer color 

 and texture, and large enough to make a perfect 

 ginger tio^ver. 



In removing dry leaves around the ferns and 

 digging out the ginger I nneartlied a music-box. 

 The and learned a lesson. I always had thought the 

 Song of cricket a sort of domesticated insect, beginning 

 with "The Cricket on the Hearth" and ending 

 with one that sang for the greater part of last 

 winter in our Inisement. A few weeks earlier I 

 had learned in an oat field many miles away that 

 there ^vere more big black crickets imder an oat 

 sheaf AX'here it lay in a low, damp place than I 

 ever had seen elsewhere in all my field work. Now 

 the forest taught me that the cricket in nay cabin 

 was a prisoner, lost from home and friends, and 



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