eve, is to cut the stalk very short before placing
in the vase; then, at night, the lily will close and the stalk curl
upward;--refresh them by changing the water, and in the morning the
stalk will be straight and the flower open.

From this time forth Summer has it all her own way. After the first of
July the yellow flowers begin to watch the yellow fireflies; Hawkweeds,
Loosestrifes, Primroses bloom, and the bushy Wild Indigo. The variety of
hues increases; delicate purple Orchises bloom in their chosen
haunts, and Wild Roses blush over hill and dale. On peat meadows the
Adder's-Tongue Arethusa (now called _Pogonia_) flowers profusely, with a
faint, delicious perfume,--and its more elegant cousin, the Calopogon,
by its side. In this vicinity we miss the blue Harebell, the identical
harebell of Ellen Douglas, which I remember waving its exquisite flowers
along the banks of the Merrimack, and again at Brattleboro', below the
cascade in the village, where it has climbed the precipitous sides
of old buildings, and nods inaccessibly from their crevices, in that
picturesque spot, looking down on the hurrying river. But with this
exception, there is nothing wanting here of the flowers of early summer.

The more closely one studies Nature, the finer her adaptations grow. For
instance, the change of seasons is analogous to a change of zones, and
summer assimilates our vegetation to that of the tropics.

In those lands, Humboldt has remarked, one misses the beauty of
wild-flowers in the grass, because the luxuriance of vegetation develops
everything into shrubs. The form and color are beautiful, "but, being
too high above the soil, they disturb that harmonious proportion which
characterizes the plants of our European meadows. Nature has, in every
zone, stamped on the landscape the peculiar type of beauty proper to
the locality." But every midsummer reveals the same tendency. In early
spring, when all is bare, and small objects are easily made prominent,
the wild-flowers are generally delicate. Later, when all verdure is
profusely expanded, these miniature strokes would be lost, and Nature
then practises landscape-gardening in large, lights up the copses with
great masses of White Alder, makes the roadsides gay with Aster and
Golden-Rod, and tops the tall coarse Meadow-Grass with nodding Lilies
and tufted Spiraea. One instinctively follows these plain hints, and
gathers bouquets sparingly in spring and exuberantly in summer.