and bring forth fragrance for melody. The lovely creatures twine and
nestle and lay their glowing faces to the very earth beneath withered
leaves, and what seemed mere barrenness becomes fresh and fragrant
beauty. So great is the charm of the pursuit, that the epigaea is really
the one wild-flower for which our country-people have a hearty passion.
Every village child knows its best haunts, and watches for it eagerly
in the spring; boys wreathe their hats with it, girls twine it in their
hair, and the cottage-windows are filled with its beauty.

In collecting these early flowers, one finds or fancies singular natural
affinities. I flatter myself with being able always to find hepatica, if
there is any within reach, for I was brought up with it ("Cockatoo
he know me berry well"); but other persons, who were brought up
with May-flower, and remember searching for it with their almost
baby-fingers, can find that better. The most remarkable instance
of these natural affinities was in the case of L.T. and his double
anemones. L. had always a gift for wild-flowers, and used often to bring
to Cambridge the largest white anemones that ever were seen, from a
certain special hill in Watertown; they were not only magnificent in
size and whiteness, but had that exquisite blue on the outside of
the petals, as if the sky had bent down in ecstasy at last over its
darlings, and left visible kisses there. But even this success was
not enough, and one day he came with something yet choicer. It was a
rue-leaved anemone (_A. thalictraides_); and, if you will believe it,
each one of the three white flowers was _double,_ not merely with that
multiplicity of petals in the disk which is common with this species,
but technically and horticulturally double, like the double-flowering
almond or cherry,--the most exquisitely delicate little petals, seeming
like lace-work. He had three specimens,--gave one to the Autocrat of
Botany, who said it was almost or quite unexampled, and another to me.