den daffodils,
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

"Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay.
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance."

No such sight could greet the poet's eye here. He might see ten
thousand marsh marigolds, or ten times ten thousand houstonias, but
they would not toss in the breeze, and they would not be sweet-scented
like the daffodils.

It is to be remembered, too, that in the moister atmosphere of England
the same amount of fragrance would be much more noticeable than with
us. Think how our sweet bay, or our pink azalea, or our white alder,
to which they have nothing that corresponds, would perfume that heavy,
vapor-laden air!

In the woods and groves in England, the wild hyacinth grows very
abundantly in spring, and in places the air is loaded with its
fragrance. In our woods a species of dicentra, commonly called
squirrel corn, has nearly the same perfume, and its racemes of nodding
whitish flowers, tinged with red, are quite as pleasing to the eye,
but it is a shyer, less abundant plant. When our children go to the
fields in April and May, they can bring home no wild flowers as
pleasing as the sweet English violet, and cowslip, and yellow
daffodil, and wallflower; and when British children go to the woods at
the same season, they can load their hands and baskets with nothing
that compares with our trailing arbutus, or, later in the season, with
our azaleas; and when their boys go fishing or boating in summer, they
can wreathe themselves with nothing that approaches our pond-lily.

There are upward of forty species of fragrant native wild flowers and
flowering shrubs and trees in New England and New York, and, no doubt,
many more in the South and West. My list is as follows:--

White violet (_Viola blanda_).
Canada violet (_Viola Canadensis_).
Hepatica (_occasionally fragrant_).
Trailing arbutus (_Epigaea repens_).
Mandrake (_Podophyllum peltatum_).
Yellow lady's-slipper (_Cypripedium parviflorum_).
Purple lady's-slipper (_Cypripedium acaule_).
Squirrel corn (_Dicentra Canadensis_).
Showy orchis (_Orchis spectabilis_).
Purple fringed-orchis (_Habenaria psycodes_).
Arethusa (_Arethusa bulbosa_).
Calopogon (_Calopogon pulchellus_).
Lady's-tresses (_Spiranthes