1 8 COLOUR SCHEMES 



Further up the Fern walk, near the upper group of 

 Trillium, are some patches, of a plant with roundish, 

 glittering leaves. It is a North American Asarum 

 {A. virginicum) ; the curious wax-like brown and 

 greenish flower, after the usual manner of its kind, 

 is short-stalked and hidden at the base of the leaf -stems. 

 Near it, and growing close to the ground in a tuft of 

 dark-green moss, is an interesting plant — Goodyera 

 tepens, a terrestrial Orchid. One might easily pass 

 it by, for its curiously white-veined leaves are half 

 hidden in the moss, and its spike of pale greenish- 

 white flower is not conspicuous ; but, knowing it 

 is there, I never pass without kneeling down, both 

 to admire its beauty and also to ensure its well-being 

 by a careful removal of a little of the deep moss 

 here and there where it threatens too close an 

 invasion. 



Now there comes a break in the Fern walk, or rather 

 it takes another character. The end of one of the 

 wide green ways that we call the Lily path comes into 

 it on the right, and immediately beyond this, stands 

 the second of the great Scotch Firs of the older wood. 

 The trunk, at five feet from the groimd, has a girth 

 of nine and a half feet. The colour of the rugged bark is 

 a wonder of lovely tones of cool greys and greens, and 

 of a luminous deep brown in the fissures and cavities. 

 Where the outer layers have flaked off it is a warm 

 reddish grey, of a quality that is almost peculiar to 

 itself. This great tree's storm-rent head towers up 

 some seventy feet, far above the surrounding fohage 

 of Oak and Birch, Close to its foot, and showing 



