fume of
which is too rank for a close room. This flower is, perhaps, like the
English fragrant orchis, found in pastures.

Few fragrant flowers in the shape of weeds have come to us from the
Old World, and this leads me to remark that plants with sweet-scented
flowers are, for the most part, more intensely local, more fastidious
and idiosyncratic, than those without perfume. Our native thistle--the
pasture thistle--has a marked fragrance, and it is much more shy and
limited in its range than the common Old World thistle that grows
everywhere. Our little sweet white violet grows only in wet places,
and the Canada violet only in high, cool woods, while the common blue
violet is much more general in its distribution. How fastidious and
exclusive is the cypripedium! You will find it in one locality in the
woods, usually on high, dry ground, and will look in vain for it
elsewhere. It does not go in herds like the commoner plants, but
affects privacy and solitude. When I come upon it in my walks, I seem
to be intruding upon some very private and exclusive company. The
large yellow cypripedium has a peculiar, heavy, oily odor.

In like manner one learns where to look for arbutus, for pipsissewa,
for the early orchis; they have their particular haunts, and their
surroundings are nearly always the same. The yellow pond-lily is found
in every sluggish stream and pond, but _Nymphaea odorata_ requires a
nicer adjustment of conditions, and consequently is more restricted in
its range. If the mullein were fragrant, or toad-flax, or the daisy,
or blueweed, or goldenrod, they would doubtless be far less
troublesome to the agriculturist. There are, of course, exceptions to
the rule I have here indicated, but it holds in most cases. Genius is
a specialty: it does not grow in every soil; it skips the many and
touches the few; and the gift of perfume to a flower is a special
grace like genius or like beauty, and never becomes common or cheap.

[Illustration: PICKING WILD FLOWERS]

"Do honey and fragrance always go together in the flowers?" Not
uniformly. Of the list of fragrant wild flowers I have given, the only
ones that the bees procure nectar from, so far as I have observed, are
arbutus, dicentra, sugar maple, locust, and linden. Non-fragrant
flowers that yield honey are those of the raspberry, clematis, sumac,
bugloss, ailanthus, goldenrod, aster, fleabane. A large number of
odorless plants yield pollen to the bee. There is ne