60 DECEMBER OUT-OF-DOORS. 
my native heath, I had discovered some- 
thing new. 
The flora of a Massachusetts December is 
of necessity limited. Even in the month 
under review, singularly favorable as it was, 
I found but sixteen sorts of wild blossoms; 
a small number, surely, though perhaps 
larger by sixteen than the average reader 
would have guessed. The names of these 
hardy adventurers must by no means go un- 
recorded: shepherd’s purse, wild pepper- 
grass, pansy, common chickweed (Stellaria 
media), mouse-ear chickweed (Cerastium 
viscosum), knawel, common mallow, witch- 
hazel, cinque-foil (Potentilla Norvegica, — 
not argentea, as I should certainly have ex- 
pected), many-flowered aster, cone-flower, 
yarrow, two kinds of groundsel, fall dande- 
lion, and jointweed. Six of these — mallow, 
cinque-foil, aster, cone-flower, fall dande- 
lion, and jointweed — were noticed only at 
Nahant; and itis further to be said that the 
jointweed was found by a friend, not by 
myself, while the cone- flower was not in 
strictness a blossom; that is to say, its rays 
were well opened, making what in common 
parlance is called a flower, but the true 
