But should we miss this delicate adjustment of time, it is easy to console ourselves with bright armfuls of Lupine, which bounteously flowers for six weeks along our lake-side, ranging from the twenty-third of May to the sixth of July.  The Lupine is one of our most travelled plants; for, though never seen off the American continent, it stretches to the Pacific, and is found upon the Arctic coast.  On these banks of Lake Quinsigamond it grows in great families, and should be gathered in masses and placed in a vase by itself; for it needs no relief from other flowers, its own soft leaves afford background enough, and though the white variety rarely occurs, yet the varying tints of blue upon the same stalk are a perpetual gratification to the eye.  I know not why shaded blues should be so beautiful in flowers, and yet avoided as distasteful in ladies’ fancy-work; but it is a mystery like that which repudiates blue-and-green from all well-regulated costumes, while Nature yet evidently prefers it to any other combination in her wardrobe.

Another constant ornament of the end of May is the large pink Lady’s-Slipper, or Moccason-Flower, the “Cypripedium not due till to-morrow” which Emerson attributes to the note-book of Thoreau,—­to-morrow, in these parts, meaning about the twentieth of May.  It belongs to the family of Orchids, a high-bred race, fastidious in habits, sensitive as to abodes.  Of the ten species named as rarest among American endogenous plants by Dr. Gray, in his valuable essay on the statistics of our Northern Flora, all but one are Orchids.  And even an abundant species, like the present, retains the family traits in its person, and never loses its high-born air and its delicate veining.  I know a grove where it can be gathered by the hundreds within a half-acre, and yet I never can divest myself of the feeling that each specimen is a choice novelty.  But the actual rarity occurs, at least in this region, when one finds the smaller and more beautiful Yellow Moccason-Flower,—­parviflorum,—­which accepts only our very choicest botanical locality, the “Rattlesnake Ledge” on Tatessit Hill,—­and may, for aught I know, have been the very plant which Elsie Venner laid upon her school-mistress’s desk.

June is an intermediate month between the spring and summer flowers.  Of the more delicate early blossoms, the Dwarf Cornel, the Solomon’s-Seal, and the Yellow Violet still linger in the woods, but rapidly make way for larger masses and more conspicuous hues.  The meadows are gorgeous with Clover, Buttercups, and Wild Geranium; but Nature is a little chary for a week or two, maturing a more abundant show.  Meanwhile one may afford to take some pains to search for another rarity, almost disappearing from this region,—­the lovely Pink Azalea.  It still grows plentifully in a few sequestered places, selecting woody swamps to hide itself; and certainly no shrub suggests, when found, more tropical associations.  Those great, nodding, airy, fragrant clusters, tossing