250 The American Naturalist. [March, 
in vain. Just where Climax prairie begins to lose itself in the 
Jordan marshes you may find the foot-high stem, with its raceme 
of greenish-white flowers, of the characteristic shape of the Pla- 
tantheras. In this variety the long, curved, deflexed spur gives to 
the raceme of flowers a curious, ragged, unkempt appearance. 
With the Cypripediums, or Lady’s Slippers, few are entirely 
unfamiliar. “ Moccasin flower” the Indians named it, far more 
appropriately, for its shape is very suggestive of the rounded, 
soleless moccasin. How vivid is the memory of our childish 
excursions to Markham’s woods! How we searched the dry 
knolls and oak-crowded uplands for Trilliums, Phlox, Lupines 
(“ Quaker bonnets” we called these), and Painted Cups, but still 
unsatisfied till we found the Yellow Lady Slipper. This was the 
supreme reward of our long tramp. In very different environ- 
ment did we find her dainty cousin, the Pink Lady Slipper. 
Down in the “ bottom-lands,” where the sluggish Oonadaga drags 
through bogs and morasses, where all is shadow and rank 
growth, there she lifts her delicate cups of pink and white, 
preaching nature’s unending sermon of beauty, purity, and sweet- 
ness from filth, decay, and corruption. Rarer than these, but 
still occasionally to be found by diligent search in swamp or 
marsh, is the Tall White Lady Slipper. 
The time-honored maxim, “ All things come round to him 
who waits,” may, for the flower-hunter, be fitly paraphrased, 
“All things come round to him who ¢vamps.’” For sooner or 
later, by lonely lake or grassy meadow, on mountain-top or busy 
side, the flower of his quest will shine before him. So I found 
the Tiny White Lady Slipper. I had heard of it now and 
then,—not often, for it is one of the shyest of its shy kind. I 
had sought for it, in coolness and damp, where it seemed as if it 
must be growing, and once a friend sent me one or two speci- 
mens. But at last an early morning walk brought me to the 
brow of a hill, from whose base a bit of lowland meadow 
stretched to the banks of Battle Creek. This interval was thickly 
dotted with the flower of my long search. They stood in patches, 
in the thick, lush grass, as if a band of fairies had danced the 
night away on the level greensward, and, fleeing away at my 
