Flowers And Ferns Of America; Volume 2

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: The Arrow-head SAGITTARIA .yARIABILIS Engelm. Homeward now went Hiawatha; Only once his pace he slackened, Only once he paused or halted, Paused to purchase heads of arrows Of the ancient Arrow-maker, In the land of the Dacotahs, Where the Falls of Minnehaha Flash and gleam among the oak-trees, Laugh and leap into the valley. There the ancient Arrow-maker Made his arrow-heads of sandstone, Arrow-heads of chalcedony, Arrow-heads of flint and jasper, Smoothed and sharpened at the edges, Hard and polished, keen and costly. With him dwelt his dark-eyed daughter, Wayward as the Minnehaha, Feet as rapid as the river, Tresses flowing like the water, And as musical a laughter; And he named her from the river, From the waterfall he named her Minnehaha ? Laughing Water. Was it then for heads of arrows, . Arrow-heads of chalcedony Arrow-heads of flint and jasper, That my Hiawatha halted In the land of the Dacotahs? L ongfeUo-w. What Hiawatha certainly was not looking after "in the land of the Dacotahs," arrow-heads, we shall most certainly see, in this excellent portrait of the Sagittaria. If we may judge by both the scientific and popular name of the plant, that is what the observer has most distinctly seen when he has met it in nature. The elegant outline and curious veining of the leaf will attract our attention and admiration more than the pure white flower. The pronounced significance of the leaf, both in the picture and in the plant, leads me on to say something about the leaves of plants. I suppose many readers are accustomed to think that the leaves of plants are of small account. They perhaps recall how in ancient times a certain fig-tree came under severe reproach because it bore " nothing but leaves." Then, too, " when the summer is past and the harvest...