WILD, OR NATIVE FLOWERS. 99 



later physitions hold it to bee effectual against pestilent diseases, and 

 the bitings and stingings of venomous beasts.' " 



Our Gentians are the last tribute with which Nature decks the 

 earth — her last brightest treasures — ere she drops her mantle of spotless 

 snow upon its surface. 



Wft find our latest flowering Gentian early in September, and as 

 late as November, if the season be still an open one, it may be seen 

 among the red leaves of the Huckleberry and Dwarf Willows, on our 

 dry plains, above Rice Lake, and fartlier Northward. The Gentians 

 seem to affect the soil on rocky islands and gravelly, open, prairie-like 

 lands, among wild grasses. The finest, most luxuriant plants of G. 

 Andrezc'sii, were gathered on islands in our back lakes, growing in rich 

 mould in rocky crevices. The Five-flowered Gentian may be found on 

 dry banks and open grassy w^astes, while again the exquisite, azure-blue, 

 single-flowered. Dwarf Fringed Crentian, Gentiana detonsa (Fries), prefers 

 the moist banks of rivulets and springs. In drier places may be seen the 

 stately, many-flowered, taller, blue Fringed Gentian, G. criniia (Frrelich.) 

 There is also a charming intermediate form of G. crinita, about a foot 

 high, with fewer flowers, but of a richer, fuller azure tint. It is of the 

 Fringed Gentian that the poet, Bryant, writes : — 



Thou lilossom Ijright with Autumn dew, 

 And coloured with heaven's own hlue, 

 That openest when the quiet light 

 Succeeds the keen and frosty ni^ht. 



Thou comest not when Violets lean 

 Oe'r wandering brooks and springs unseen ; 

 Thou waitest late, and comest alone 

 When woods are bare and birds are flown. 

 And frosts and shortening days portend 

 The aged year is at an end. 



Then doth thy sweet and quiet eye 

 Look through its fringes to the sky ; 

 Blue, blue as if the sky let fall, 

 A flower from its cerulean wall." — Bryant. 



But bewildered among so many beauties, I have wandered away 

 from my first love. The large dark-blue or open-belled Gentian 

 Qentiana Saponaria (L). The leaves of this species are somewhat 

 clasping at the base, and pointed at the end, at first green, but assuming 

 a purplish-bronze hue ; the smooth stem is also of a reddish purple, 

 with the large open five-cleft dark-blue corollas terminal on the summit:, 

 generally three blossoms, and between the axils of the leaves three 



