BY SADA V. BLAIR. "O, land of love and dreamy thoughts And shining fields and shady spots, Of coolest, greenest, grassy plots Embossed with wild forget-me-nots, V And all the blooms that cunningly Lift their faces up to me." IOLETS, yellow and white and blue, are but a haunting memory of little heads nodding by "wandering brooks and unseen springs;" the pale aureoles of the tree tops have darkened into crowns of glory that make a welcome shelter from the summer sun; birds that were rollicksome lovers a month ago are benedicts now and practicing birdly domestic science -with the servant problem left out; one by one the days with their whisperings of summertime have come and gone and we awake to find ourselves "knee deep in June." Behind us are the fair forms of delicate spring flowers, the gay songs of care-free birds, the sweet odors of young growing greeneryand for all these we must wait until springtime comes again-but who would turn back the clock of time when crimson clover blooms? For Of the sweet clover blossoms his boyhood knew?" The human machinery will work without a jar all during the winter and early spring, but when clover-time comes a spirit of unrest begins to make trouble. The exhilaration of spring has waned a little; tasks that almost did themselves drag now; the boy in the country school-house shuffles his feet on the floor and wanders away "in a barefooted dream;" while in at the open window of many a city office floats the spirit of a longforgotten country boyhood. The man at his desk fidgets awhile, gets up with a start and next week he'll be fishing along some quiet stream. For the most of us vacation time comes after the heat of summer is upon us and the natural desire is to escape to the coolest place we can find-speaking now, of course, of those who are seeking comfort rather than social distractions. As the result of a search for "a lodge in some vast wilderness," all the inland lakes and rivers have their banks dotted with the tents and cottages of summer-rest seekers and nature worshippers. Some are there to fish or hunt in harmless fashion, doing no damage to fish or fowl, others prefer, novel in hand, to seek some shady spot. Some go for the love of the tree and the flower and the bird, and because the woods call them and they must answer. Such as these know more than I can write. They will point to the rare bird's swinging home, they will lead the way to some nook where the moccasin flower, fair lady's slipper, hides. But there are others who will go home from a summer's outing no nearer to Nature than when they left their city streets, and it is not always the fault of the individual. Power of observation and concentration are probably the main differences in the mental make-up of the naturalist and the stroller who, having eyes, sees not. One by long training knows what to see and where to find it. The other needs to have long ledger columns and the whir of revolving machinery blotted out before he is ready to see and hear the things his starving soul has been demanding unheeded. Perhaps the time comes when he really knows that he has been missing something out of the real things of life, while plunging after its artificialities. He goes out along the country roadside or sits by the side of some small stream, and suddenly he knows that he is alone-a stranger-more alone than he was when he went up to the city for the first time and stood on a street corner trying to understand it all as the crowds passed him by. And now again when the city ways have become his ways and he knows the secrets of her mighty enterprise, he goes out to the scenes of childhood and is once more a stranger. If once he knew bird and bee and bush, and they knew him, there has come a mutual forgetfulness. He must be gin again, for Nature will make no advances to him. Although we speak much of an universal brotherhood, we do not call those men "friends" whose names we do not know. This is as true when we come to make the acquaintance of our frail sisterhood of plants. We care little for them if their names are less well known to us than are hind me a sturdy young grapevine is climbing over a dying cedar, whose trunk is hidden in a feathery mass of asparagus and wild carrot. The latter has a coarse, fernlike stalk surmounted by an umbel of small, white flowers-not very beautiful individually or collectively, but lending their touch of sunshine to the dark undergrowth of the border. Great-leaved burdocks stand about looking like wanderers from the tropics, and suggest themselves as satisfactory for background or fence corner planting. Some of the weediest of weeds accommodate themselves to civilization very effectively. Virginia creepers, the five-leaved ivy known everywhere, are running over the ground and up scores of tree trunks. One has gone up perpendicularly some twentyfive or thirty feet, not winding about the trunk, but mounting straight up on the one side. The vine has put out leaves only at scattered intervals and the effect is that of water sprouts. A le vine climbing up the same tree attracted my attention and I discovered it to be the poison ivy, whose sins are so frequently laid upon the innocent head of the Virginia creeper, although the two vines bare little in common after all, except that one has three, the other five, leaders. These are the distinguishing fatures: First, they are not members of the same family, the re-leaved vine flourishing onder the weighty name of Ampelop $3 Age, while the dangerous threelaved the smember of the beautfel sem name being The re-leaved ivy cints by means of teniris: the poison ivy cimbs h murs of rodes. The former is a mast more ang imber and leaves its com or core on the ground About the thickets and low grounds The of each is a Dashner be those of the Eve-leaved beng serie of the posson or three རྒྱས་ང Foson oak is em 100ved to the stree-leaved And some soemes have forsons of their ancestors and reran plan with a tendency to Smarcatmarmore names ne self commentedly beglory, the beauty yet The hier looks cow dee's smilax, "Tre sold tender prickles that lose their courage and give way before the attacking enemy. Över there, where the glint of the sun falls upon it, is a delicate starwort or aster, one of the earliest of her beautiful sisterhood. The flowers of this particular kind have from six to nine pinkish-white :ays, the flowers gathered in a very loose corymb. Later in the season, from late July until autumn-days grow crisp, the purple asters will be the charm of the roadside and fence corners. There are many varieties of this beautiful native flower, and although they have strong likes and dislikes as to location, their tastes vary sufficiently to guarantee almost a continuous roadside border during the autumn. I have gathered four or five varieties during an afternoon's drive, their colors varying from rose purple to the most delicate lavender or light blue. Whether they are found west of the Rockies I do not know, but from the Atlantic westward, at least that far, they make the woodlands and the roadside glad, so long as they are left alone, but several varieties object to the rude hand of the collector and promptly wilt. Along with the early asters of June and July, and sometimes preceding them, is the wild rose with its blushing beauty. There are some sweet odors that cling to memory more strongly than others and who that has smelled the wild rose when its petals were wet with the rain can ever forget its delicate odor? "The rose looks fair, but fairer we it deem For that sweet odor which doth in it live." Hedgerows and stake-and-rider fences deck themselves proudly with the dainty pink shells until the nights grow cool and the "last rose of summer lies faded and dead." Several varieties are found scattered over the states, but the one termwild single rose-in its very simplicity describes them all with sufficient accuracy for our purpose. We have failed to mention the dandelion, yet blest be the common things of life. Who scorns the dish of dandelion "greens?" Or who can see the dandelion without recalling the Indian legend of Shawondasee, the lazy southwind lover, content to woo at long range? Day by day he watched her standing there on the prairie until her golden crown had turned to snowy white, and then he sighed as his rival the northwind spirited her away. About midsummer the mulleins hold up venturing on village streets, the yellow toadflox shows its spurs. The flower is twolipped, the throat almost closed by the prominent palate. The lower side is spurred. The linear leaves of the stalk are almost crowded on the stalk in alternate arrangement. As we stop to examine one, the small boy says: "Humph! you don't want that. That's Butter an' Eggs." He was not supposed to know that "Butter and Eggs," when mixed with milk, makes a cosmetic instead of a cake. Have you ever thought how bare this world would be if, in the words of that old and is sometimes called spiderwort, may poet, "No glimpse could we see Of some green-knotted garland of grass?" Day after day it humbly bends beneath the feet of thousands who never stoop to see it, yet are first to complain of cinder and gravel walks. "The grass is so much easier on one's feet." And so we are pleased to walk over it or lounge on it, but to waste time looking at it-why, it is "too common:" yet Nature has given us few pictures more beautiful than the grassy knoll or roadside. Since there are 3.500 species of grass, and these are scattered over the entire globe, we can scarcely expect to get on intimate terms with very many during a brief evening's stroll or even in our summer's outing. usually be found in a rich, moist pasture, just far enough inside the fence to make it difficult to gather. The flower of the species found throughout the middle West is a deep blue-a watery blue-sometimes in clusters, axillary and terminal, sometimes a solitary flower borne on a mucilaginous stem. There are three petals and three sepals with sixbearded stamens. The leaves of the plant are linear-lanceolate, rather succulent in texture. Many a country pupil has had no other ink than what his mother made from tradescantia flowers, and the pages of numberless autograph albums have shown its cerulean tint in belabored verses expressive of all degrees of tenderness and flourishes. Down in the grass on roadside or in the woods is the little yellow oxalis or woodsorrel, with its sour juice and clover-like leaflets, which fold and sleep at night. The seed pods are about an inch long, and in the middle of July carry on a mimic battle that is probably unknown to many flower lovers. I have seen but the one account of their method of seed expulsion, and that was written by William Hamilton Gibson for a Harper's Magazine of years ago. The pod is five-celled, and when fully ripe the gentlest touch is sufficient to start a fusillade of seeds, which escape through a lengthwise split in each cell. Gibson describes the unexpected raise which a small fly got by sitting down on a pod just ripe for mischief. It was blown several inches into the air by the explosion and probably furnished a very exciting story of hairbreadth escape in flydom. In the first place, it is necessary to know just how to distinguish the grasses, for "all is not gold that glitters," nor are all plants grass that look like it. For example, many people who ought to know better mistake sedges and rushes for grass, supposing them to be only coarse species. Yet these same individuals would probably not know that wheat, oats and corn are grasses. The easiest unscientific way to distinguish the grasses is this (and I quote from the Cyclopædia of American Horticulture): "The leaves of sedges are arranged on three sides or angles of the stem, while on grasses they are found on two sides, alternate and 2ranked. In making use of this test, care must be taken to select well-grown, erect stems. Most sedges have solid stems and most grasses have hollow stems." The grass most commonly seen in the meadows and used for hay is a cat's tail grass called timothy, or herd grass in portions of the East. This is a tall grass with a long, cylindrical spike, with short bristles on the glumes. The showy redtop may be known by the dark purple stigmas, the spikelets often being purplish. This grass delights to cover a dry or sandy field. But enough of this, for the description grows as dry as hay. Make friends of the grasses whether you know their names or not, for none of the plant family have a better right to human consideration. Find out the name of that tuft beside you and learn to recognize it wherever you see it. Then try another. That is the easiest way, if it isn't the best. Once while driving along the Kaskaskia the road suddenly divided to meet again a few rods farther on, and in this opening was a tangle of blackberry vines bending with a weight of the great golden and scarlet funnels of the trumpet creeper with its many leaflets not unlike coarse fern. The flamelike burst of color was startling, and when I had ruthlessly cut long sprays to carry to our cabin it seemed almost as if that bit of road was not so sunny as before. The flower that got its name tradescantia Another vine which affords as great a contrast with the trumpet creeper as the plant world shows is the Virgin's bower, wild clematis. In its delicate simplicity it well deserves to bower a nunnery. The leaf has three ovate-lobed leaflets, and a dexterous turning of the middle leaf stem is its only means of climbing. The leaves are opposite. The flower has no petals, but the four sepals are a greenish white with short spreading stamens. In the fruiting season the vine is even more attractive than earlier, for each pod has a feathery tail two or three inches in length and collectively they look like a green plume. Anything more unlike the gaudy brilliancy of the trumpet vine would be hard to imagine. But no, I had forgotten the dodder. Have you found that strange anomaly of vegetation, an orange yellow cord twining in deathlike grip about plants and shrubs, sometimes even wandering to the stake-and-rider fence? This is dodder, a parasitic, leafless vine bearing tight clusters of small, white flowers. There are several varieties of this vine, all being degraded members of the convolvulus family, but they are similar enough to be easily recognized if one variety is known. In the spring the seed germinates, and as soon as the infant plant finds a satisfactory host plant its root dies and it feeds on its victim. If it can find no suitable plant to prey upon, it dies. The mystery of the parasite tempts one to carry away all that can be loosened, and we wander on through rows of corn until our feet are tripped "By the honeysuckle's tangles, where the water lilies dipped, And the ripple of the river lipped the moss along the brink, Where the placid-eyed and lazy-footed cattle come to drink, And the tilting snipe stood fearless." I close my eyes and see again that old, old home which Riley must have seen before he wrote "The Days Gone By." Sloping down to the creek's edge the "back lot" faced the east, and underneath the oak and linden trees that bathed their feet in the yellow stream were countless flowers that bloomed for me alone or so I thought. A fragrant honeysuckle swayed just within reach of my grapevine swing. It was shrubby in growth with clusters of pale yellow or ivory-colored flowers, rather funnelshaped, with five lobes and an odor that is one of the sweetest of my childhood memories. The opposite, whitish-green leaves united their bases about the stem and made a cup in which the yellow berries rested. From a bittersweet vine that had twisted into a great rope, we gathered in the late fall many a stem of the orange-colored, berrylike pods which had bursted open to show the scarlet covering of the seeds. For winter bouquets there is nothing else so showy and lasting. And there on the creek bank were two stalks of the wild cranesbill, or "bird bills," as we called them. This is one of the most beautiful of the summer-blooming wood flowers, resembling in shape the florists' cyclamen, with its sharply reflexed corolla, from the center of which the beakshaped fruit receptacle protrudes. The large, five-lobed leaves are mottled slightly with white. The open moist wood or ravine is its usual home, where its flowers may be seen at some distance nodding on their six TALL OR GIANT SUNFLOWER. or eight inch stems any time from April through July. I did not realize in those days what a living herbarium I had at my disposal, but now as I recall one after another the varieties that bloomed in that old back yard, I think that it must have contained a representative collection of the flora of that region. Wild sweet-william of the phlox family was there with his pinkish purple, rather expressionless face, borne on a body somewhere near three feet in height, with tapering leaves of the ovate-lanceolate shape, and corolla, five-lobed salver shape with a |