NORTH AMERICAN FLORA. 265 
consider that these great roads run east and west, that the 
prevalent winds are from the west, that a freight-train left 
unguarded was not long ago blown on for more than one 
hundred miles before it could be stopped, not altogether on 
down grades, and that the bared and mostly unkempt borders 
of these railways form capital seed-beds and nursery-ground 
for such plants. 
Returning now from this side issue, let me advert to another 
and, I judge, a very pleasant experience which the botanist 
and the cultivator may have on first visiting the American 
shores. At almost every step he comes upon old acquaintances, 
upon shrubs and trees and flowering herbs, mostly peculiar to 
this country, but with which he is familiar in the grounds and 
gardens of his home. Great Britain is especially hospitable 
to American trees and shrubs. There those both of the east- 
ern and western sides of our continent flourish side by side. 
Here they almost wholly refuse such association. But the 
most familiar and longest-established representatives of our 
flora (certain western annuals excepted) were drawn from the 
Atlantic coast. Among them are the Virginia Creeper or 
Ampelopsis, almost as commonly grown in Europe as here, 
and which, I think, displays its autumnal crimson as brightly 
there as along the borders of its native woods where you will 
everywhere meet with it; the Red and Sugar Maples, which 
give the notable autumnal glow to our northern woods, but 
rarely make much show in Europe, perhaps for lack of sharp 
contrast between summer and autumn; the ornamental Eri- 
eaceous shrubs, Kalmias, Azaleas, Rhododendrons, and the 
like, specially called American plants in England, although 
all the Rhododendrons of the finer sort are half Asiatic, the 
hardy American species having been crossed and recrossed 
with more elegant but tender Indian species. 
As to flowering herbs, somewhat of the delight with which 
an American first gathers wild Primroses and Cowslips and 
Foxgloves and Daisies in Europe, may be enjoyed by the 
European botanist when he comes upon our Trilliums and 
Sanguinaria, Cypripediums and Dodecatheon, our species of 
Phlox, Coreopsis, etc., so familiar in his gardens; or when, 
