[Illustration: =The Ram’s-Head Lady’s Slipper.= (_Cypripedium arietinum._) In different positions this flower suggests a ram’s head.] This rare orchid is seldom, if ever, collected by botanists. It is one of the smallest Moccasin-Flowers found in the Northern Atlantic Region. The pigmy of the genus is _Cypripedium fasciculatum_, found under young _Conifers_ in open woods in the swamp regions of northern California, along the Pacific slope, exclusively west of the Continental Divide. The _Cypripedia_ found in the Pacific Region are very different from those of the Atlantic, _Cypripedium Californicum_, for instance, producing a simple raceme bearing from three to twelve flowers, all emerging from the axils of leafy bracts, the stem often growing four feet high. The shoe-shaped flowers resemble miniature blossoms of our eastern _Cypripedium reginæ_ in color and structure of sepals and petals. The Ram’s-Head Cypripedium is certainly one of the rarest species on the continent, and appears to be more plentiful, if this word can be used of so scarce a flower, in the State of Vermont than in any other region that has been reported in its continental range. It grows in low, damp marl and peat swamps. IV The Stolen Moccasins Woodlands, green and gay with dew, Here, to-day, I pledge anew All the love I gave to you. ALICE CARY, _A Lesson_. Whether the season is premature or backward, the Moccasin-Flowers always appear at the same date, along with the Painted and Crimson Trilliums, in the warm Glen of Comus. I am sure of finding these flowers unfolding, the week previous to Decoration Day, from the 20th to the 28th of May. On the 30th of May, four days after I had discovered the famous two hundred Pink Moccasin buds on the hillside above the Glen of Comus, I imagined now that they must be in full array, wearing the rich hues of magenta and all the delicate tints of green, white, and pink. When once fully unfolded they change color very rapidly. Late in the afternoon I entered the edge of the Swamp of Oracles in District Fourteen, north of the schoolhouse. My hound was my sole companion, and I heard him in the distance making friends with children, whose voices came echoing from the direction of my fairy-land of Moccasins. A foreboding that all its beauty had been plundered took possession of me, for I knew that children are instinctively selfish about flowers, and pluck every blossom they see, even though they may throw them away afterward.