THE SECRET OF THE CLOSED GENTIAN. 189 
phcebe’s nest. One nest set in another, like a pile of sau¬ 
cers, or like an inverted Chinese pagoda. An ideal place 
for a house, as Mrs. Phoebe had evidently thought, four 
springs in succession. No cat, skunk, weasel, snake or 
squirrel could ever climb that smooth stone wall to reach 
it, and no bird of prey could swoop down upon it; it was 
sheltered from wind and storm, and winged food buzzed 
at her very door. 
Out in the light again, the brook was deeper, and one 
must take to the bank and push through the dense growth 
of tree and shrub. And here is an example of Nature’s 
perfect arrangement of color, and of the paramount value 
she puts on environment. For here are cardinal flowers, 
flaming like torches in the dense shade of the alders, root¬ 
ed in black moss in the middle of the dark water. Who 
ever saw cardinals growing in sunlight, except where man 
had interfered with the setting of Nature? 
A little farther down, in a bit of sun-lit meadow, are 
great knee-deep masses of the gentian. As some writer 
has described them, “ With bright, rounded buds, look¬ 
ing from day to day as if just ready to open, but they nev¬ 
er will; they are closed gentian.” Mrs. Parsons calls 
them “ Deep-tinted flowers, firmly closed, as though to pro¬ 
tect the delicate reproductive organs within from the sharp 
touches of the late year.” Alice Tounsberry says : “Of 
course there is a great deal of theory in its closed corolla ; 
it protects its delicate organs from the cold of the late sea¬ 
son, and all other evils to which they might be subjected.” 
And F. Schuyler Mathews : “ There is quite a difference 
of opinion among botanists as to whether the closed gen¬ 
tian is subject to cross-fertilization, or simply fertilizes it¬ 
self ; Grdy thought the former was the case, and says that 
he has seen a. bumblebee force its way into the corolla ; 
but Dr. Kunze concludes that the flowers derive no aid 
