Near the projecting stumps, amid floating logs were snails’ eggs, and I noticed several baby turtles, recently hatched from eggs in the sand, varying from the size of nickels to that of a silver dollar. Eel-grass and many marsh grasses and sedges grew or floated on the water, among which the small fish could hide. On the edge of the water among the ferns and brakes I found the leaves of the Purple-Fringed Orchis (_Habenaria psycodes_), but no plants likely to bloom this season. When I reached the mill, I placed my treasures in the buggy, and started after that part of my load which I had left around the hill. On my return, I gathered some waxen, crimson cones of the beautiful tamarack tree by the path. When I bade farewell to little Merwin and his mother, who lived in the mill-house, I asked them to watch for the rose-purple orchids,—Pogonias and Limodorums,—which were now due any day, east of the mill. The boy was very earnest and observing, and I knew that I now had a comrade to guard over the Bogs of Etchowog. Students from Williams College, and tourists from near and afar seek these swamps of Pownal for botanical specimens, and Merwin had often been their guide to the haunts of these rare treasures. He told me that students from Williams had, the year before, gathered innumerable pink and purple flowers in these marshes, as well as the beautiful bearded spikes of the Buckbean. For a succession of years—during all of President Carter’s term at Williams College at least—it has been the unique custom to bank the chancel of the Congregational Church with the Showy Moccasin-Flowers and Maiden-Hair Ferns, on Baccalaureate Sunday,—which occurs usually about June twentieth. These gorgeously colored orchids reach the height of their perfection about this date. They seem a fitting decoration for the church during the Commencement services of this college, situated in the heart of these Hoosac Highlands. Plentiful as are the colonies of this Showy Moccasin-Flower in its pet localities, it has always been an interesting question to me where the great numbers of perfect blossoms grouped about the chancel are secured. They are known to the children in each school district, and usually they are collected as soon as discovered. It is surprising to me that extinction of this rare plant is not taking place more rapidly hereabout. This orchid produces very few seedlings in its native haunts, and at the rate of collecting both its blossoms and roots in this valley, we must surely look for total extinction in less than half a century more, unless this ruthless plucking is modified. VI Hail Storms at Etchowog ... Suddenly, a flaw Of chill wind menaced; then a strong blast beat Down the long valley’s murmuring pines and awoke The noon-dreams of the sleeping lake, and broke Its smooth steel mirror at the mountain’s feet. WHITTIER, _Storm on Lake Asquam_.