452 Old Time Gardens 
calls it “ the hateful Toad-flax,” and old Manasseh 
Cutler, in a curious mixture of compliment and slur, 
“a common, handsome, tedious weed.” It travels 
above ground and below ground, and in some soils 
will run out the grass. It knows how to allure the 
bumblebee, however, and has honey in its heart. I 
think it a lovely flower, though it is queer; and it is 
a delight to the scientific botanist, in the delicate 
perfection of its methods and means of fertilization. 
The greatest beauty of this flower is in late au- 
tumn, when it springs up densely in shaven fields. 
I have seen, during the last week in October, fields 
entirely filled with its exquisite sulphur-yellow tint, 
one of the most delicate colors in nature ; a yellow 
that is luminous at night, and is rivalled only by the 
pale yellow translucent leaves of the Moosewood in 
late autumn, which make such a strange pallid light 
in old forests in the North — a light which dominates 
over every other autumn tint, though the trees which 
bear them are so spindling and low, and little noted 
save in early spring in their rare pinkness, and in 
this their autumn etherealization. And the Moose- 
wood shares the mystery of the Butter-and-eggs as 
well as its color. I should be afraid to drive or 
walk alone in a wood road, when the Moosewood 
leaves were turning yellow in autumn. I shall 
never forget them in Dublin, New Hampshire, 
driving through what our delightful Yankee chari- 
oteer and guide called “ only a cat-road.” 
This was to me a new use of the word cat as a 
prasnomen, though I knew, as did Dr. Holmes and 
H osea Biglow, and every good New Englander, 
