In country towns of New England, where summer resorts for tourists are numerous, one finds youthful venders selling the roots of the Orchid Family to “lovers of flowers,” and thus even the lovers of Nature aid in the extinction of the treasures and wealth of her soil. Species of _Cypripedium_ are indeed the most gorgeous among our native orchids, and will be among the first of the family to become extinct, since they do not reproduce seedlings abundantly, even in their most choice haunts. V The Queen of the Indian Moccasin-Flowers The rounded world is fair to see, Nine times folded in mystery; Though baffled seers cannot impart The secret of its laboring heart, Throb thine with Nature’s throbbing breast, And all is clear from east to west. EMERSON, _Nature_. Between May 30th and June 8th, I made short excursions to the Bog of Oracles above the Glen of Comus. On the latter date I found my first blossoms of the season, of the Showy Queen of the Moccasin-Flowers (_Cypripedium reginæ_), the white sepals and petals standing fully unfurled, but still lacking the rich magenta-pink on the crest of the slippers which another week’s time would give them. One feature this season, among these plants, was the unusual number of two buds on a single scape. While a single blossom is generally found on a stalk, I discovered now that nearly every other stem bore two buds. At the same time and in the same place, along the edges of decaying logs on the borders of Ball Brook, grew the spikes of the Tall Green Orchis (_Habenaria hyperborea_). Its greenish-yellow color is conspicuously different from the tones of its distant relative, the showy, white-petaled queen of this swamp. Another spike similar to that of the Tall Green Orchis, but short and smaller in every way, stood near. It was not so tall and coarse as its sister species, and may have been a stray specimen of the Tall White Habenaria (_Habenaria dilatata_). These two species are peculiar in appearance, and many inexperienced bog-hunters would pass them by as weeds, and homely weeds at that. Upon closer scrutiny, the peculiar twisted seed-pods of these flowers suggest a rarity. The name _Habenaria_ signifies “a rein or thong,” derived from the shape of the labellum in some species of this genus. They are often also called “Rein-Orchises.” On June 10th I drove into the Chalk Pond region, on the “Witch Hollow,” or Gulf Road leading to the Centre-of-the-Town; and hitching old Bonny, took a circle around the peat and marl meadows, searching for signs of the Showy Orchis (_Orchis spectabilis_), a species of a sister genus of Habenaria. The Showy Orchis is due here about May 25th, the date on which the early Moccasin-Flowers awaken.