be drawn aside. Once, when examining some of these flowers while still growing, I was surprised to find this cavity filled with flies somewhat larger than the common house-fly, all busy as could be in eating the pollen, of which scarcely a grain then remained. I counted fourteen flies in one flower. Nearly every one examined was filled in the same way. There was a shower coming up at the time, but the flies were evidently seeking food, if not shelter. In the leaf their fate would have been very different.

When I want to find it in great abundance I go to the margin of a pool in the depths of a cedar swamp in Auburn. For convenience, when referring to this pool, I call it "The Lake of the Dismal Swamp." There in the sphagnum moss, where at every step the feet sink out of sight and we wonder what may be beneath, the pitcher-plant is at home. If I ever visit the real "Lake of the Dismal Swamp" I shall expect to find there one of the allied species of this interesting genus.

The cow-parsnip and the great angelica will not be overlooked. They overtop most of their associates and challenge attention by their stature, if in no other way. The delicate little rock-rose sheds its petals so quickly that we can hardly see the use of its opening them, while its neighbor in the list, the dog lily, is persistent in retaining its petals as long as possible. The little evening primrose now opens its quiet eye, and is liable

to be confounded, at a hasty glance, with the cinquefoil, its neighbor. The lobelia with its small blue flowers would scarcely suggest any possibility of relationship with the bright, tall cardinal flower of a later date, but we shall see that they are near of kin.

June 20th was the date last year for Liparis. It is time now to visit the one locality where I have found it. In the meadow through which I pass, the quaking grass (Briza media, L.), which rejoices under fifty-four different common names in Britten and Holland's "Dictionary of English Plant-Names," is at its prime. On the margin of the ditch that borders this field are some odorous plants, which prove to be wild garlic; in the edge of the wood, where plant life runs wild, Lysimachia and Celastrus and Diervilla and a host of others are seen. By the side of this now almost obliterated wood-road is our little colony of Liparis, perfect in its own beauty, perfect in the charm of its surroundings. There are larger and more gayly-colored flowers to follow, but none which I would rather see than this. I hope to find it here every year, where I first found it, and where I can renew the pleasant surprise of that first discovery.

THE EARLY SUMMER FLOWERS.

July 2, 1857.-Calla palustris with its convolute point, like the cultivated, at the south end of Gowing's swamp. Having found this in one place, I now find it in another. Many an object is not seen, though it falls within the range of our visual ray, because it does not come within the range of our intellectual ray. So in the largest sense we find only the world we look for.

—THOREAU — Summer.

As I now read the "Summer" diary of Thoreau and enjoy it thoroughly, I cannot help regretting that it was not printed earlier, so that I might have had it as a guide when my own interest in Nature was awaking. One can certainly see some things by himself, but he can as certainly see many more if led by a sympathetic and interested guide. There are not many avenues of human thought or industry where the finger-posts set up by those who have already traveled the road are not helpful. I find that I like to know what other men think of those things which interest me. And so outdoor books, as they may be called, books which present

Nature as viewed by the naturalist rather than by the biologist, naturally form a part of my library.

So I find it pleasant to wander in imagination by the side of gentle Izaak Walton through the sweet English meadows, listening to the song of lark and nightingale and milkmaid, breathing the delicious odor of the hawthorn hedges, filling my basket with the finny treasures of the stream and filling my mind with sweetness and light, as he discourses on the old-fashioned but choicely-good poetry of Kit Marlow and Sir Walter Raleigh and George Herbert and Edmund Waller and other poets of the time. It does not matter now that the modern angler studies his art in other books or from other masters, the perennial charm of the style of "The Compleat Angler," which has stood the test of nearly 250 years, has gained for its author a literary immortality.

It is now a little more than a hundred years since Gilbert White's "Natural History of Selborne" was first printed, perhaps the most famous book of its kind in any language. The feeling of many readers toward it has been best expressed by John Burroughs in his “Indoor Studies." He says: "I was moved to take down my White's 'Selborne' and examine it again for the source of delight I had had in it, on hearing a distinguished literary man, the late Richard Grant White, say it was a book he could not read with any degree of

pleasure; to him its pages were a bare record of uninteresting facts. . . . There is indeed something a little disappointing in White's book when one takes it up for the first time, with his mind full of its great fame. When I myself first looked into it many years ago, I found nothing in it that attracted me, and so passed it by. Much more recently it fell into my hands, when I felt its charm and value at once. As a stimulus and spur to the study of natural history it has no doubt had more influence than any other work of the century. Its merits in this direction alone would perhaps account for its success. But, while it has other merits, and great ones, it has been a fortunate book; it has had little competition; it has had the wind always with it, so to speak. It furnished a staple the demand for which was always steady and the supply small. There was no other book of any merit like it for nearly a hundred years. It does not appeal to a large class of readers, and yet no library is complete without it."

Not very far from the parish of Selborne, where Gilbert White lived and wrote, is the parish of Boldre, where William Gilpin, its vicar, was living at the same time and was writing his "Remarks on Forest Scenery," a work which has passed through many editions. Its scenes are laid in the New Forest in Hampshire, with every part of which Gilpin was familiar, and with the life in it he was in entire sympathy. I prize my own