I am enjoying myself exceedingly. The dear flowers of Wisconsin are incomparably more numerous than those of Canada or Indiana. With what fervid, unspeakable joy did I welcome those flowers that I have loved so long! Hundreds grow in the full light of our opening that I have not seen since leaving home. In company with my little friend I visited Muir’s Lake. We approached it by a ravine in the principal hills that belong to it. We emerged from the low leafy oaks, and it came in full view all unchanged, sparkling and clear, with its edging of rushes and lilies. And there, too, was the meadow, with its brook and willows, and all the well-known nooks of its winding border where many a moss and fern find home. I held these poor eyes to the dear scene and it reached me once more in its fullest glory. We visited my millpond, a very Lilliputian affair upon a branch creek from springs in the meadow. After leaving the dam my stream flows underground a few yards. The opening of this dark way is extremely beautiful. I wish you could see it. It is hung with a slender meadow sedge whose flowing tapered leaves have just sufficient stiffness to make them arch with inimitable beauty as they reach down to welcome the water to the light. This, I think, is one of Nature’s finest pieces most delicately finished and composed of just this quiet flowing water, sedge, and summer light. I wish you could see the ferns of this neighborhood. We have some of the finest assemblies imaginable. There is a little grassy lakelet about half a mile from here, shaded and sheltered by a dense growth of small oaks. Just where those oaks meet the marginal sedges of the lake is a circle of ferns, a perfect brotherhood of the three osmundas,--_regalis_, _Claytoniana_, and _Cinnamomea_. Of the three, _Claytoniana_ is the most stately and luxuriant. I never saw such lordly, magnificent clumps before. Their average height is not less than 3½ or 4 feet. I measured several fronds that exceeded 5,--one, 5 feet 9 inches. Their palace home gave no evidence of having ever been trampled upon. I do wish you could meet them. This is my favorite fern. I’m sorry it does not grow in Scotland. Had Hugh Miller seen it there, he would not have called _regalis_ the prince of Balich ferns. I think that I have seen specimens of the ostrich fern in some places of Canada which might rival my _Osmunda_ in height, but not in beauty and sublimity.