A Window in Arcady 
August 8 . —Down by the river or along the creek’s 
side, where these August days we go for a whiff of the 
freshness which nature sends into the world by the water¬ 
ways, the arrow-head displays its pretty white flowers 
amid rustling leaves whose characteristic shape gives the 
plant its popular name. This plant, which is distributed 
throughout our country from ocean to ocean and from 
British America to the Rio Grande, has a special interest 
in that its tuberous roots furnished the North American 
Indians with an important part of their diet. The tubers 
are like the potatoes “on Maumee”; they grow small— 
that is, they are about the size of a hen’s egg. They can 
be eaten either boiled or roasted, and the collection of 
them from the muddy depths of the waters in which 
they grow was reduced to a science by the tribes of the 
Pacific coast. There, according to Lewis and Clarke’s 
narrative, the Indian women would push light canoes into 
the ponds where the arrow-head grew, and, standing in 
the water up to their breasts, would work the tubers loose 
with their toes. Thus released the roots would float im¬ 
mediately to the surface of the water, where they would 
be gathered and thrown into the canoes to be trans¬ 
ported ashore to the campfire. 
Humbler beauties are the common cat-tails, which are 
marshaled, millions of them, side by side in roadside 
swamps and marshes everywhere. When the wind stirs 
the long, rapier-like leaves nod and sway and flash back the 
sunlight from their polished surface as from so many 
Damascus blades. If you look closely at these leaves you 
will find that they are not flat in a rigid plane, as you 
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