I am now with the loved of home. I received your kind letter on my arrival in Portage four weeks ago. I have delayed writing that I might be able to state when I could be in Madison. I have never seen Arethusa nor Aspidium fragrans, but I know many a meadow where Calopogon finds home. With us it is now in the plenitude of glory. Camptosorus is not here, but I can easily procure you a specimen from the rocks of Owen Sound, Canada. It is there very abundant, so also is Scolopendrium. Have you a living specimen of this last fern? Please tell me particularly about the sending or bringing Calopogon or any other of our plants you wish for. I have no skill whatever in the matter.
I am enjoying myself exceedingly. The dear flowers of Wisconsin are incomparably more numerous than those of Canada or Indiana. With what fervid, unspeakable joy did I welcome those flowers that I have loved so long! Hundreds grow in the full light of our opening that I have not seen since leaving home. In company with my little friend I visited Muir’s Lake. We approached it by a ravine in the principal hills that belong to it. We emerged from the low leafy oaks, and it came in full view all unchanged, sparkling and clear, with its edging of rushes and lilies. And there, too, was the meadow, with its brook and willows, and all the well-known nooks of its winding border where many a moss and fern find home. I held these poor eyes to the dear scene and it reached me once more in its fullest glory.
We visited my millpond, a very Lilliputian affair upon a branch creek from springs in the meadow. After leaving the dam my stream flows underground a few yards. The opening of this dark way is extremely beautiful. I wish you could see it. It is hung with a slender meadow sedge whose flowing tapered leaves have just sufficient stiffness to make them arch with inimitable beauty as they reach down to welcome the water to the light. This, I think, is one of Nature’s finest pieces most delicately finished and composed of just this quiet flowing water, sedge, and summer light.
I wish you could see the ferns of this neighborhood. We have some of the finest assemblies imaginable. There is a little grassy lakelet about half a mile from here, shaded and sheltered by a dense growth of small oaks. Just where those oaks meet the marginal sedges of the lake is a circle of ferns, a perfect brotherhood of the three osmundas,—regalis, Claytoniana, and Cinnamomea. Of the three, Claytoniana is the most stately and luxuriant. I never saw such lordly, magnificent clumps before. Their average height is not less than 3½ or 4 feet. I measured several fronds that exceeded 5,—one, 5 feet 9 inches. Their palace home gave no evidence of having ever been trampled upon. I do wish you could meet them. This is my favorite fern. I’m sorry it does not grow in Scotland. Had Hugh Miller seen it there, he would not have called regalis the prince of Balich ferns. I think that I have seen specimens of the ostrich fern in some places of Canada which might rival my Osmunda in height, but not in beauty and sublimity.
I was anxious to see Illinois prairies on my way home; so we went to Decatur, or near the centre of the State, thence north by Rockford and Janesville. I botanized one week on the prairie about seven miles southwest of Pecatonica. I gathered the most beautiful bouquet there that I ever saw. I seldom make bouquets. I never saw but very few that I thought were at all beautiful. I was anxious to know the grasses and sedges of the Illinois prairies and also their comparative abundance; so I walked one hundred yards in a straight line, gathering at each step that grass or sedge nearest my foot, placing them one by one in my left hand as I walked along, without looking at them or entertaining the remotest idea of making a bouquet. At the end of this measured walk my handful, of course, consisted of one hundred plants arranged in Nature’s own way as regards kind, comparative numbers, and size. I looked at my grass bouquet by chance—was startled—held it at arms length in sight of its own near and distant scenery and companion flowers—my discovery was complete and I was delighted beyond measure with the new and extreme beauty. Here it is:—
| Of | Kœleria cristata | 55 |
| ” | Agrostis scabra | 29 |
| ” | Panicum clandestinum | 7 |
| ” | Panicum depauperatum | 1 |
| ” | Stipa spartea | 7 |
| ” | Poa alsodes | 7 |
| ” | Poa pratensis | 1 |
| ” | Carex panicea | 4 |
| ” | Carex Novæ-Angliæ | 1 |
The extremely fine and diffuse purple Agrostis contrasted most divinely with the taller, strict, taper-finished Kœleria. The long-awned single Stipa too and P. clandestinum, with their broad ovate leaves and purple muffy pistils, played an important part; so also did the cylindrical spikes of the sedges. All were just in place; every leaf had its proper taper and texture and exact measure of green. Only P. pratensis seemed out of place, and as might be expected it proved to be an intruder, belonging to a field or bouquet in Europe. Can it be that a single flower or weed or grass in all these prairies occupies a chance position? Can it be that the folding or curvature of a single leaf is wrong or undetermined in these gardens that God is keeping?
The most microscopic portions of plants are beautiful in themselves, and these are beautiful combined into individuals, and undoubtedly all are woven with equal care into one harmonious, beautiful whole.
I have the analysis of two other handfuls of prairie plants which I will show you another time.
We hope to be in Madison in about three weeks.