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One day I came alone into the woods, and as I reached a certain place, sauntering along in perfect silence, I evidently surprised somebody, for I was saluted by low "smacks" and I caught glimpses of two birds who dived into the jewel-weed and disappeared.

It should rather be that of some delicately nurtured plant, some rare orchid of sheltered conservatories, it is so delicate and delightful. The jewel-weed is as frail as a dream for all its vigorous growth which reaches sometimes six feet. If you pluck it it withers before you can get it home to put in water and its jewels shrivel to nothing on the way.

Instead, the old leaves on the limbs rattle and waver down; the cornfield is only an area of stubs and long lines of yellow shocks; and in the corners of the meadow fence stand clumps of flower-stalks, joe-pye-weed, boneset, goldenrod, bare and already bleaching; and deep within their matted shade, where the brook bends about an elder bush, a single amber pendant of the jewel-weed, to which a bumble-bee comes droning on wings so loud that a little hyla near us stops his pipe to listen!

Yellow returns in the drooping flowers of the jewel-weed, and blue repeats itself in the trembling hare-bells, and scarlet is glorified in the flaming robe of the cardinal-flower. Later still, the summer closes in a splendour of bloom, with gentians and asters and goldenrod.

It would be pleasant to imagine that the food brought by that dainty dame, and administered to her beloved brood, consisted of the nectar of flowers, drawn from the sweet peas that filled the garden with beauty and perfume, the gay flaunting scarlet beans over the way, or the golden drops of the jewel-weed modestly hiding under their broad leaves, in the hollow down by the bridge.

Torrey's description of hummingbird feeding, I should have thought the green-clad dame was destroying her offspring, instead of tenderly ministering to their wants. Bird babies grow apace. Appetites waxed stronger, and the trumpet-vine had dropped its blossoms. The little mother had to seek new fields, and she settled on a patch of jewel-weed for her supplies.

A vague sweet fragrance was on the vesperal air; some subtle distillation of asters or jewel-weed or "mountain-snow," and the leafage of crimson sumac and purple sweet-gum and yellow hickory and the late ripening frost-grapes all in the culmination of autumnal perfection; more than one star gleamed whitely palpitant in a sky that was yet blue and roseate with a reminiscence of sunset; a restful sentiment, a brief truce stilled the guerilla's tempestuous pulse as he continued to stand beside his horse's head while the girl waited, seated on the saddle blanket.

The sounds we were following led us through some unused roads entirely grown up with jewel-weed, part of it five feet high, and thickly hung with the yellow flower from which it takes its name. It had rained in the night, and every leaf was adorned with minute drops like gems.

Our fleabane has become a common roadside weed in England, and a few other of our native less known plants have gained a foothold in the Old World. Our beautiful jewel-weed has recently appeared along certain of the English rivers. Pokeweed is a native American, and what a lusty, royal plant it is!

In the spring he is a dark, slimy, rather forbidding lizard in the pools; now he is more beautiful than the jewel-weed in the woods. This is said to be an immature form, which returns to the ponds and matures the next season; but whether it is the male or the female that assumes this bright hue, or both, I do not know.