LOBELIA. 
223 
tricity we have had this summer. We have often, in common 
seasons, heavy showers, with very sharp hghtning, and thunder 
which echoes grandly among our hills. We have known the 
lightning to strike seven times in the course of an hour, in the vil- 
lage and the immediate neighborhood, twice in the lake, and five 
times on the land ; but very happily, no serious accident occurred 
on that occasion, though one or two persons were stunned. This 
summer we have hardly seen a flash. 
First melons to-day. 
Wednesday, August \st. — Pleasant ; walked over Mill Bridge 
in the afternoon. Gathered a fine bunch of the crimson lobelia 
by the river-side. What an exquisite shade of red lies on the 
petals of this brilliant plant ! It reminds one that the Russian 
word for beauty and for red is said to be the same — krasnoi, as 
M. de Segur gives it ; most of us would probably consider rose- 
color or blue as more beautiful, but certainly the inimitable, vivid^ 
and yet delicate tint of the lobelia, may claim to be identical with 
krasnoi, or beauty. The blue lobelia, also very handsome in its 
way, is not found here, though very common on the Mohawk. 
Walking through a wood, found hawk-wort and asters in bloom, 
also a handsome rattlesnake plantain, or Goodyera, with its veined 
leaves and fragrant spike of white flowers ; this is one of the 
plants formerly thought to cure the bite of the rattlesnake, though 
little credit is given to the notion now-a-days. 
Thursday, 2d. — Long drive down the valley. 
There is not a single town of any size within a distance of 
forty miles, yet already the rural population of this county is quite 
large. The whole country, within a wide circuit noith, south, 
east and west, partakes of the same general character ; mountain 
