eaf,
then doffs the cloak and spreads its long petals round a group of yellow
stamens. The flower falls apart so easily that when in full bloom it
will hardly bear transportation, but with a touch the stem stands naked,
a bare gold-tipped sceptre amid drifts of snow. And the contradiction
of its hues seems carried into its habits. One of the most shy of wild
plants, easily banished from its locality by any invasion, it yet takes
to the garden with unpardonable readiness, doubles its size, blossoms
earlier, repudiates its love of water, and flaunts its great leaves in
the unnatural confinement until it elbows out the exotics. Its charm is
gone, unless one find it in its native haunts, beside some cascade which
streams over rocks that are dark with moisture, green with moss, and
snowy with white bubbles. Each spray of dripping feather-moss exudes a
tiny torrent of its own, or braided with some tiny neighbor, above the
little water-fonts which sleep sunless in ever-verdant caves. Sometimes
along these emerald canals there comes a sudden rush and hurry, as if
some anxious housekeeper upon the hill above were afraid that things
were not stirring fast enough,--and then again the waving and sinuous
lines of water are quieted to a serener flow. The delicious red-thrush
and the busy little yellow-throat are not yet come to this their summer
haunt; but all day long the answering field-sparrows trill out their
sweet, shy, accelerating lay.

In the same localities with the Bloodroot, though some days later, grows
the Dog-Tooth Violet,--a name hopelessly inappropriate, but likely
never to be changed. These hardy and prolific creatures have also
many localities of their own; for, though they do not acquiesce in
cultivation, like the sycophantic Bloodroot, yet they are hard to banish
from their native haunts, but linger after the woods are cleared and the
meadow drained. The bright flowers blaze back all the yellow light of
noonday as the gay petals curl and spread themselves above their beds of
mottled leaves; but it is always a disappointment to gather them, for
indoors they miss the full ardor of the sunbeams, and are apt to go to
sleep and nod expressionless from the stalk.

And almost on the same day with this bright apparition one may greet a
multitude of concurrent visitors, arriving so accurately together that
it is almost a matter of accident which of the party shall first report
himself. Perhaps the Dandelion should have th