JUNE IN FRANCONIA. 25 
I was not asked to stay, but I was invited 
to come again; and the next season, also in 
June, I twice accepted the invitation. On 
the first of these occasions, although I was 
eight days later than I had been the year 
before (June 19th instead of June 11th), the 
diapensia was just coming into somewhat 
free bloom, while the sandwort showed only 
here and there a stray flower, and the geum 
was only in bud. The dwarf paper birch 
(trees of no one knows what age, matting 
the ground) was in blossom, with large, 
handsome catkins, while Cutler’s willow 
was already in fruit, and the crowberry 
likewise. The willow, like the birch, has 
learned that the only way to live in such a 
place is to lie flat upon the ground and let 
the wind blow over you. The other flowers 
noted at the summit were one of the blue- 
berries (Vaccinium uliginosum), Bigelow’s 
sedge, and the fragrant alpine holy-grass 
(Hierochloa alpina). Why should this sa- 
ered grass, which Christians sprinkle in 
front of their church doors on feast-days, be 
scattered thus upon our higher mountain- 
tops, unless these places are indeed, as the 
Indian and the ancient Hebrew believed, 
the special abode of the Great Spirit? 
