to the common sense of the community. Why, it is one of the daintiest wood-flowers, with nothing in the world to do with chicks, or weeds, or winter. It is not the least of an evergreen, its leaves withering in autumn, as a matter of course, and there is not a chicken in the country that knows it by sight or taste. Discriminating people, when they find its elegant silvery flower growing in the woods beside the violet, call it May-star; and so should everybody who sees it.
The cool-wort grows in patches upon many banks within the woods, or near them. It is a very pretty flower from its fight airy character, and the country people employ its broad, violet-shaped leaves for healing purposes. They lay them, freshly gathered, on scalds and burns, and, like all domestic receipts of the sort, they never fail of course, but “work like a charm;” that is to say, as charms worked some hundred years ago. It is the leaves only that are used in this way, and we have seen persons who professed to have been much benefited by them.
The slender mitella, or fringe-cup, or false sanicle—one does not like a false name for a flower—hangs its tiny white cups at intervals on a tall, slender, two-leaved stalk; a pretty, unpretending little thing, which scatters its black seeds very early in the season. It is one of the plants we have in common with Northern Asia.
As for the May-wings,[1] or “gay-wings,” they are in truth one of the gayest little blossoms we have; growing low as they do, and many of their winged flowers together, you might fancy them so many warm lilac, or deep rose-colored butterflies resting on
- ↑ Polygalia Pancifolia.
