ated teakettle as he struggles. The arching filaments of
those fuzzy stamens have tangled his short legs and he is shaking
the pollen out of the antlers all into the fur of his yellow
overcoat. Before he gets out he is right mad and loaded with
pollen for the fertilization of the next bloom. He comes squeezing
out, as flat as a pancake, sharp end first, and though I watch
close by I am very respectfully motionless. But he gets all over
it by the time he has flown to the next bloom and his hum as he
prods his way in has the tone of a cheerful "Good morning."

The turtle-heads have none of the frail loveliness of the
jewel-weeds that suggest half-visible dryads, but they have a stanch
beauty of their own which I think makes them seem very comely.
Each corolla is a smooth, opaque white through which no light may
pass. It is easy to know how it looks inside a jewel of the
jewel-weed. From without the imagination can appreciate that glow of
pale gold which must there suffuse all things. To such tiny midges
and beetles, spiders and moths as may enter it must be like
walking about in the heart of the Tiffany yellow diamond. The
bumblebee might tell how it seems in the turtlehead petal, if he
knows. I fancy, however, he is so everlastingly busy and so mad
with the filaments when he is inside that he has no time to think
of atmosphere. Often the pure white of this flower is tinged with
a soft shading of delicate rose near the tip of the petal. It is
an unobtrusive shading, as shy as the bloom itself. Ashes of roses
might describe the tint better, for it is as gentle as the fading
pink of a sunset sky, a shade that has dropped thence to the lips
of these blossoms hiding in the dusk of the swamp. You see it best
by looking close into the very face of the flower as the bumblebee
does when about to alight on it, and I think it is set there to
show him the way. By the time he has seen that, he is near enough
to be drawn by the faint but ravishing perfume which is breathed
out by the flower. It is so faint that you must come like the bee
to the very lip of the corolla before you will find it. It is so
tender and of such refinement that when once you get it you will
think no blossom has its equal. The white alder at this time of
year is prodigal of rich and delectable odors. The jewel-weed with
all its beauty has none that my sense can perceive. But that of
Chelone glabra, as modest and withdrawn as the flower itself,
seems hardly to