The old gentleman was very heavy. Not only was it hard for him to fly up to the roost, but equally hard for him to hold on when once there. Yet I could never persuade him to rest on the floor with me. Like his kind, he preferred the discomfort of sleeping on a pole—a taste I cannot understand. I was four months old before I saw one of my own kind. Then, one day three ducks were brought into the yard. They did not seem to mind being stared at, but fell to eating corn and talking among themselves. “Horribly greedy,” said Mrs. Redbreast. “I for one don’t care to associate with them.” “Now you know what you look like, old quacker,” snapped the cross hen, with a peck at me. “My poor nerves will suffer sadly now.” These unkind remarks scarcely disturbed me, however. There was a new feeling stirring in my heart. I am afraid you will have to be a duck, and live a long time without other ducks, to understand it. Here were companions, whose natures and tastes were like mine, and I was content. Louise Jamison. A LOST FLOWER. More than a hundred years ago a new flower was found in the wild and rugged mountains of North Carolina by Michaux, a Frenchman, who had traversed many lands and known many perils and adventures in his search for rare plants. He had traveled through his native country and Spain, climbed the Pyrenees, crossed sea and desert, been despoiled by Arab robbers, so that he arrived in Persia with nothing but his books left to him of his baggage. Luckily he cured the Shah of an illness, and was allowed to carry back to France many Eastern plants. He was then sent by his country to explore the forests of North America. In the mountainous country of North Carolina there were no roads, only Indian trails, traversed by a few missionaries and traders. In this wild and lonely region he found a new flower, that belonged to no recognized genus, and was mentioned by no previous botanist. It was a modest little flower; its pure white cup rises on a wand-like stem in the midst of shining and tender leaves, round in shape and prettily edged. He secured a specimen, but he had no leisure to study its habits in the “montagnes sauvages,” as he called these mountains in his own language. Rumors reached him of the French Revolution, and he immediately hastened to return home. He was shipwrecked on the voyage and lost nearly all his collections. From this time the flower was lost, so far as any knowledge of its existence was concerned. But after the death of Michaux, our botanist, Dr. Asa Gray, happened to be in Paris with the son, the younger Michaux, also a lover of plants. Very naturally Michaux showed his American guest his father’s new specimens of American plants that had escaped the shipwreck, and Dr. Gray was much interested in this little flower, marked “Unknown.”