March 18, 1860. I examine the skunk cabbage now generally and abundantly in bloom all along under Clam-shell. It is a flower, as it were, without a leaf. All that you see is a stout beaked hood just rising above the dead brown grass in the springy ground where it has felt the heat under some south bank. The single enveloping leaf or "spathe" is all the flower that you see commonly, and these are as variously colored as tulips, and of singular color, from a very dark, almost black mahogany to a bright yellow, streaked or freckled with mahogany. It is a leaf simply folded around the flower, with its top like a bird's beak bent over it for its further protection, evidently to keep off wind and frost, and having a sharp angle down its back. These various colors are seen close together, and the beaks are bent in various directions. All along under that bank I heard the hum of honey bees in the air, attracted by this flower. Especially the hum of one within a spathe sounds deep and loud. They circle about the bud, at first hesitatingly, then alight and enter at the open door and crawl over the spaclix, and reappear laden with the yellow pollen. What a remarkable instinct it is that leads them to this flower. This bee is said to have been introduced by the white man, but how much it has learned. This is almost
