too, with a broad reddish or reddish-purple midvein and 

 margin, each prickle purple, with a yellowish tip. The 

 flowers are pale, creamy-yellow, with splendid royal pur- 

 ple involucres. 



Creeping through the grass everywhere were the little 

 white flowers and slender shoots of the Running Swamp 

 Blackberry, Rubus hispidus, and the long branches of the 

 Cranberry ; but not a flower on the latter was to be seen, 

 and nowhere in the swamp was a shrub in bloom. Here 

 and there, all over the meadow, were fine clumps of the 

 Flowering Fern, its rusty-brown fertile panicles towering 

 above the tallest grass top and tr.e shorter, paler green 

 tufts of the Sensitive Fern. A slight stretch of the imagi- 

 nation will include in the meadow a waste strip of ground 

 on the edge of the road, where the Lupin runs riot over the 

 sand in long-stemmed, long-spiked masses of deep-blue 

 Pea flowers. The contrast of the flo vers against the yellow 

 sand was very fine. The pod is also handsome, clothed with 

 a long, fine down. Another prominent blue flower, but 

 this one growing in the wettest part of the bog, is the little 

 Blue Flag, Iris prismatica, a slender, graceful thing that at 

 that time was abundant in every wet place. 



The next day more Pogonias were in bloom, and here 

 and there through the grass the Cranberry-buds were show- 

 ing. The little Sundrops were more and more numerous, 

 and rivaled the Buttercups in the brilliancy of their yellow. 

 The species is that described in Gray's Manual as Oenothera 

 fruticosa, var. humifusa, and is there accredited as growing 

 only in Suffolk County, Long Island, and it is certainly 

 very common here. It is, as its name implies, a low, 

 spreading plant ; its stems are somewhat woody, reddish, 

 and, as well as the leaves and capsules, very puberulent, 

 but the flowers are not by any means always small ; some 

 of them, when fully expanded, are over one and a quarter 

 inches broad. 



Careful search in a dry corner revealed the curious, deli- 

 cate, little green Orchid, Twayblade, Liparis Lceselii. 

 Never found in great numbers, it is a pleasant surprise to 

 come upon a little colony hidden among the grasses. It 

 has a stiff, perky, independent way of growing, with two 

 broad glossy leaves and a delicate spike of thread-like 

 flowers. Often, too, the previous year's dry capsule clings 

 to the old bulb, which persists for quite a while. 



A couple of days later the first Wild Rose, Rosa lucida, 

 was seen ; the tall, somewhat flesh-colored stems of 

 Aletris farinosa were noted among the grass, and off 

 among the rushes faint white gleams told of the Wool- 

 grass, Eriophorum cyperinum, that was beginning to 

 bloom. 



Two more days, and on the 2 2d, the Pogonia-flowers by 

 the hundred extended as far as the eye could reach, grow- 

 ing sometimes out of the water. There were so many of 

 them that their perfume, a curious mixture of violets and 

 vanilla, pervaded the atmosphere. They are charming, 

 dainty things, and have a contented way of growing up 

 out of the Sphagnum without any visible means of support 

 in the bulb line, like their near relatives, the Twayblade. 

 Another Orchid, Calopogon pulchellus, the Pogonia's almost 

 invariable companion, made its first appearance that day ; 

 it is taller, larger, bright magenta-purple, and very gaudy 

 and self-assertive. There was only one of them in bloom, 

 but little, round, greenish buds here and there at the top of 

 slender flexuous stems told of many more to come. 



