Across the road the monkey flower grins affably at the edge of the grass and the water hemlock, with a hollow stem as big as a gun-barrel and tall as a man, spreads its large umbels of tiny white flowers on curving branches like a vase-shaped elm in miniature. Twice or thrice pinnate leaves, toothed like a tenon saw, with conspicuous veins ending in the notches, brand it as the beaver poison, otherwise known as the musquash root and spotted cowbane. From its tuberous roots was prepared the poison which Socrates drank without fear; why should he fear death? Does he not still live among us? Does he not question us, teach us? Yellow loose-strifes and rattle-box are in the swamp, and a patch of swamp milkweed with brilliant fritillaries sipping nectar from its purple blossoms. White wands of meadow-sweet, clusters of sensitive fern, a big shrub of pussy willow with cool green leaves as grateful now as the white and gold blossoms were in April; white trunks and fluttering leaves of small aspens where the grosbeak has just finished nesting; bushy willows and withes of young poplar; nodding wool-grasses and various headed sedges; all these are between the roadside and the fence. There the elder puts out blossoms of spicy snow big as dinner-plates and the Maryland yellow-throat who has four babies in the bulky nest at the foot of the black-berry bush sits and sings his "witchity, witchity, witchity." The lark sparrow has her nest at the foot of a thistle and her mate has perched so often on a small elm near-by that he has worn several of the leaves from a topmost twig. In the late afternoons and evenings he sits there and vies with the indigo bunting who sits on the bare branches at the top of a tall red oak, throwing back his little head and pouring out sweet rills of melody. Near him is the dickcissel, incessantly singing from the twig of a crab-apple; these three make a tireless trio, singing each hour of the day. The bunting's nest is in a low elm bush close to the fence where a wee brown bird sits listening to the strains of the bright little bird above and the little dickcissels have just hatched out in the nest at the base of a tussock not very far away.