a portion of which is carried away by the 
intruder and serves to fertilize the next 
flower that is visited. 
It seems hardly 
worth while to use so much art to fertilize 
plants whose seeds are so delicate. Not 
one in a thousand ever grows. The Mouse- 
ear, Antennaria, has a seed almost as small. 
but it spreads everywhere. 
Lady's Slippers will shed countless seeds 
year after year, and the old plants are 
much more likely to go than young ones to 
come. The lens which so quickly gives parts 
A patch of 

and proportions to most small seeds, makes i\w ‘ LEP 
these look more than ever like chance bits 
of rubbish. 
A month, or more, and the purple 
Orchis grandiflora is blooming in spring 
runs and marshes, a tall stately plant with 
smooth leaves and a dense spike of flowers 
with fringed petals, rather small individ- 
ually, but showy in the mass. It has less 
the looks of an Orchid than most of its 
tribe; it might be thought to belong to 

N\\ q Y) 
\ ii I) ] 
Uf 
f My Vip 
: awey \ 
other families from a little distance. CYPRIPEDIUUM ACAULE 
A striking plant is the Shin-leaf, Orchis 
ORCHIS GRANDIFLORA 

orbiculata, in dense shades, with two great rounded 
leaves lying close to the ground, and a tall scape 
with a long spike of greenish flowers; but other 
smaller related species are hardly visible among the 
Solomon's Seals and Pyrolas. 
It is August; the season has culminated; the 
Mandrakes, whose bloom accompanied the Showy 
Orchis, have ripened their fruit, and the fields are 
fading. Now comes the long, gentle descent to 
the winter. In the damp mold of the thickest 
woods you may now find a cluster of dark purple 
scapes a foot or two high, bearing a spike of Or- 
chid flowers; it is the Coral-root, Corallorhiza odon- 
torhiza. It has no leaves, only a few brown scales 
are clasped around the stem. Why do most plants 
without green foliage wait for the later summer? 
The Indnan Pipe and the Pine-sap, Montropa, the 
Beech-drops and the Broom-rapes all belong to the 
declining year. The lip of the Coral-root has spots 
of the richest crimson, but they are almost micro- 
scopic. Its strange leafless habit is its chief 
interest. 
Later still when the Asters are in bloom, and 
the woods resplendent with autumnal tints, we go 
forth into a land strangely silent. As | walk through 
these stony pastures, a booming echo from the 
caverns in the bed-rock beneath my feet is almost 
the only sound, and here is the latest Orchid flower 
3 
