Before me opened a wide expanse of meadow-land, where even unruly cows dared not wander, and man seldom ventured to trespass. Nature’s remote solitude indeed was peacefully hidden here. No human voices nor sounds of hay-making ever echoed over these luxuriant fields, and the grasses grew sweetly, to fall untouched to earth again, mown as it were by the autumn winds, and stored beneath the drifts of November snow, to lay, in time, one more thin coat of soil upon the unplumbed depths of this ancient lake bed. During some long-ago winter, some one had ventured here while the earth was frozen and safe, and had built a homely hedge-fence through the meadow, probably to keep the cattle pasturing hereabout away from the dangerous bog. This fence was the only visible trace of man. In its tumbled-down and overgrown condition, it became a part of Nature’s self, and added to the picturesqueness of the field. Although Rafinesque says “that he hates the sight of fences like the Indians,” to me the hedge-fence is one of the wildest and most primitive of forest barriers. Indeed, it must have originated with the veritable wild man himself. I was tempted on and still farther on through the meadow, by the brilliant crimson-purple blossoms of the Pitcher Plant, or Side-Saddle Flowers, so named on account of the hard shells of the stigma of these flowers resembling the padded cushions of a lady’s ancient side-saddle. This cushion was known as the “pillion.” The more common name in this locality for these flowers is St. Jacob’s-Dippers and Dumb-Watches, children playing with the hard shells of the stigmas left after the purple petals have fallen, calling them watches. The convex surface of the stigma does indeed resemble the face of a watch, although there are no hands to point the hour. Gay blossoms of Fleur-de-lis flaunted their gaudy petals, and many times deceived me by making me imagine that I spied the Purple-Fringed Orchises in the distance, waving amid the tall grasses. Here I dreamed away an hour or more, following out some little paths, worn perhaps by the muskrats or swamp minks or wicked weasels, or perchance by the tiny feet of the meadow-moles, who apparently had blindly rooted various underground tunnels in every direction. I can fancy them all trotting swiftly along, playful at times, yet with an eye to their affairs,—quite as important in the scheme of Nature and Science as are the brokers’ studied operations in Wall Street. The weasels and minks are the terrors of the other path-holders in this natural syndicate. They are indeed the high and dreaded trust officials of the lesser and blind rooters of the earth. Tangled vines of the marsh cranberry were now in full bloom, and at the same time the soft fruit of last autumn’s crop was present on the vines, still bright crimson, even after enduring the winter’s frosts and stubborn snows.