Page:Summer - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/357

6 p. m. To Hubbard's Bathing Place. Pogonias are still abundant in the meadows, but arethusas I have not lately seen. . . . The blue-eyed grass shuts up before sunset. . . . The very handsome "pink-purple" flowers of the Calopogon! pulchellus enrich the grass all around the edge of Hubbard's blueberry swamp, and are now in their prime. The Arethusa bulbosa, "crystalline purple," Pogonia ophioglassoides, snake-mouthed [tongued] arethusa, "pale purple," and the Calopogon pulchellus, grass pink, "pink-purple," make one family in my mind (next to the purple orchis, or with it), being flowers par excellence, all flower, naked flowers, and difficult, at least the calopogon, to preserve. But they are flowers, excepting the first, at least, without a name. Pogonia! Calopogon!! They would blush still deeper if they knew what names man had given them. The first and the last interest me most, for the pogonia has a strong, snaky odor. The first may perhaps retain its name, arethusa, from the places in which it grows, and the other two deserve the names of nymphs, perhaps of the class called Naiades. How would the Naiad Ægle do for one? . . . To be sure, in a perfect flower, there will be proportion between the flowers and leaves, but these are fair and delicate, nymph-like. . . . When the yellow lily flowers in the meadows, and the red in dry lands and by wood-paths, then,