This brook enters a large, open, meadow marsh,—the ancient lake bed of which I have spoken before,—the Chalk Pond hollow. Since it is now drained, it appears to be a promising soil in which to seek the Purple-Fringed Habenarias in the proper season. I found the leaves of a plant which I believe to have been that of one of the Purple-Fringed Orchises, but from its producing no flowers this season I was not able to designate it. Here, also, small ferns and luxuriant brakes were sheltered amid the low sumach bushes and willows. Wild grape-vines entwined the trunks of trees, reaching far into the tops of the high elms. One immense elm had been blown over by some northeast hurricane, which had quite recently swept through this hollow. The upturned roots of this ruined tree had apparently grown about a deeply buried fellow in the peat and marl, for they still retained the impression of the buried trunk about which they had clung. In the mud and water from which the tree had been torn, lay in its deep grave this log, bare of its outer bark, but still sound and round. It was now well water-soaked, after having been so long sealed from the air and light beneath the earth. How many centuries it had been buried there, no one can guess. The now apparently aged elm upon the surface had torn up several feet of earth as it fell. Forest after forest had thus fallen, a new one rising over it, eventually to give place to another, and itself to form a strata of mould, enriching the soil of these bogs which yield so many floral treasures. I did not remain in this meadow long, as it proved still too damp to walk through grasses and sedges without water-tight boots. Coming out of this place at the foot of the little ravine below the colony of Ram’s-Heads, I ran upon numerous oblong, waxen, green leaves, which at first reminded me of the similar leaves of the Pink Moccasin-Flower (_Cypripedium acaule_). But on closer search for their seed-capsules, I found the fresh bracted processes of a spike containing several ovaries instead of one, as in the Moccasin-Flower. Evidently this plant was not a species of Cypripedium; and although the scape was broken, enough of the alternating process of twisting ovaries remained to assure me that I had found a colony of the early and Showy Orchis (_Orchis spectabilis_), which is one of the first species of orchids to bloom in New England. Indeed, it is said to open the orchid season as early as May 19th, and is found with the Wake-Robins and Arbutus, when the woods are otherwise bare and brown. I secured three of the finest plants.