ing you, these
jewels, and looking like golden butterflies just spreading petal
wings for a flight. At such times I am minded not to move suddenly
lest they go off over the treetops like a flock of goldfinches. If
they should I should not be surprised. With a change of light or
position they change appearance again and become tiny gold
dragons, winged dragons with gaping mouths and little keen brown
eyes that size you up. Again each is but an ear-pendant, beaten of
thin gold hanging beneath the shell-green ear of the dryad.

All these are early morning fancies, born, I dare say, of the fine
flavor of the place, drunk in dew. At noon, when the sun shines
direct into the marshy glade, the dryads have gone back into their
trees for a noonday nap and the jewel-weeds are but weeds after
all, though beautiful ones. Bees come sailing along and plunge at
the open cornucopia of the lower petal, which was the very
dragon's mouth, after the honey in its tip. Honey bees would find
ready entrance, but the burly bumblebees are far too fat. These
light on the lip, through inherited habit, no doubt, but
immediately turn to the recurved honey-holding tip and plunge the
proboscis through its slender texture, stealing the honey from
flower after flower. In a day's watching I have seen only
bumblebees gathering honey from these flowers, and I wonder about
the fertilization which certainly requires that insects should go
in and out at that open dragon mouth, not little chaps, but buzzy,
fuzzy creatures that will brush off the pollen and carry it.

[Illustration: Captain's Hill from Marsh Margin]

I have no doubt about the bumblebees and the turtle-heads. Each
vivid white corolla of the groups that stand so stiffly on the
ends of the long stalks seems especially made for a bumblebee. He
goes into it as a hand into a glove, flattening himself amazingly
for the entrance, but finding room to work in the interior, though
not enough to turn about in. On his way in, what pollen he already
may have collected on his furry back slips easily off on the very
lip of the stigma which waits at the strategic point with the
antlers crowding well forward, but firmly held a hair's breadth
behind it. Thus each bloom is fertilized with the pollen from some
other, insuring cross-fertilization. The bumblebee takes his toll
in honey, but when he comes to back out he has trouble. If you
will listen close by you will hear him buzzing and burbling like
an overhe