our picturesque importation from China. And when he came to the May-apple
he wrote that the sweetish fruit was "eaten by pigs and boys." This made
William Hamilton Gibson remember his own boyish gorgings and he wrote:
"Think of it boys. And think of what else he says of it: 'Ovary ovoid,
stigma sessile, undulate, seeds covering the lateral placenta, each
enclosed in an aril.' Now it may be safe for pigs and billy-goats to
tackle such a compound as that, but we boys all like to know what we are
eating, and I cannot but feel that the public health officials of every
township should require this formula of Dr. Gray's to be printed on every
one of these big loaded pills, if that is what they are really made of."

Another interesting plant is the _trillium erectum_, which with the
_trillium recurvatum_, is now to be found in the woods hereabouts. The
flowers of the _trillium erectum_ are ill scented, carrion scented, if
you please. Now the botanists have found that this odor, which is so
unpleasant to the human nostrils, does the plant a real service by
attracting the common green flesh-flies, such as are seen in the
butchershops in the summer-time. They eat the pollen, which is supposed
to taste as it smells and thus as they go from flower to flower they
carry pollen from one blossom to another and so secure for the plant
cross-pollination.

So we may walk from one flower to another until the morning wears to a
bright noon and the afternoon wanes into a songful sunset.

* * * * *

In the swamp, where the red-winged blackbird is building her bulky nest
between the stems of the cat tail, and the prairie marsh wren is making
her second or third little globular nest in a similar place, there is a