234 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Of a very different type, perhaps more showy and certainly as 

 interesting to the student of floral structures, is the great blue 

 lobelia {Lobelia syphilitica), a frequenter of all low places, where 

 its rank growth and bright deep blue render it a prominent ob- 

 ject. This plant with its insect attendants has often furnished 

 amusement for me by the half-hour. The insects seem always in 

 haste, and dodge in and out of these blossoms with a methodical 

 rapidity, each time receiving a new invoice of pollen to be scat- 

 tered upon the stigmas of other blossoms subsequently visited. 

 Among the most seemingly out-of -place blossoms as to time of 

 appearing were those of the common blue violet. This is strictly 

 one of the spring flowers, but with us for years it makes a second 

 advent, and in some places blossoms so freely as to be no rarity. 

 It has been used for classes of a hundred members for dissection 

 in October. This favorite plant is not as well known in habit as 

 it deserves. Its underground close-fertilized flowers, for example, 

 are unseen, therefore passed by by those who only pick the showy 

 aerial blossoms. The little low, round-leaved mallow, or prostrate 

 mallow — in my boyhood days we called it " cheeses " — is one of 

 our October flowers. 



It will be seen that a fair share of the late autumn blossoms 

 are weeds and useless plants. The May- weed {Anthemis cotula) 

 is one of those which, if less common and without its rank odor, 

 would be a very attractive plant in both foliage and flower ; but, 

 as it is, no one is anxious to give this wayside intruder any high 

 place among the purely ornamental species. In like manner the 

 mullein, or "great American velvet-leaf" as it is sometimes 

 called in Europe ( Verbascum tliapsus), is a plant with some in- 

 herent attractions ; but, owing to its obtrusive habit, combined 

 with a coarseness and boldness, it can only rank with the weeds. 

 It will accommodate itself remarkably to unfavorable conditions 

 and come up blooming under all sorts of rough if not abusive 

 treatment. There is a strict military air to this plant as well as 

 to one of its October associates in the pasture {Verbena strida). 

 Both have stems much straighter than some ramrods, and one 

 time a friend, seeing the mullein in great abundance upon rolling 

 ground, remarked that they were like ten thousand men march- 

 ing up a hill. The species of liatris, or blazing-stars, are of the 

 same strict habit but vastly more showy. We have three species 

 of these charming rose-purple composites, all of which flower late 

 in summer and remain to display their marvels of beauty long 

 after the tender plants have served their time. 



Among all the late blossoms there are none for which I have 

 a greater fondness than the gentians. They come, with their 

 mingled purple and blue, at a time when those colors have be- 

 come unusually rare, for they are never common at any time of 



