20 <S>n tbe Stufc of IRaturai Scenery. 



where the coniferous evergreen trees take hold in earnest and 

 the deciduous trees become more and more rare. Hemlock, 

 spruce and pine are mixed for a time, but at last endless 

 forests, in which one kind predominates, stretch their 

 awful silence far and wide. Here in the holy of holies of 

 nature the surface is clean, as if trimmed by a careful hand, 

 and sprinkled over with fallen cones and needles, forming a 

 deep and even covering. Herbaceous plants are scarce ex- 

 cept where a fallen tree has made an opening, or where a 

 ravine or a river with grassy banks admits sufficient light 

 for shrubs and flowers. Among the flowers common in 

 somewhat open pine woods, the hepatica is perhaps the most 

 familiar. Twinflowers (Linnea borealis), a minute trailing 

 plant, rattlesnake plantain and the fragrant night violet 

 are not uncommon, and shade-loving ferns are plentiful in 

 rocky places. 



Some species of pine form vast forests on low and watery 

 ground, such as our own white pine. Pine-forests are most 

 common in northern latitudes, where they cover whole 

 provinces ; mountain, plain and valley alike, for miles and 

 miles; but they form special features of mountainous re- 

 gions. 



Extensive pine-barrens form a peculiar feature of many 

 southern States wide sandy plains covered with a more or 

 less dense growth of yellow pine, black and willow-leaved 

 oak, sometimes intermixed with hummocks of deciduous 

 woods of hickory, oak and maple. Delicate herbaceous 

 plants abound in the light sandy soil among tufted masses 

 of heath-like shrubs, sand myrtles and vacciniums. Here 

 the lupine, with its fingered leaves and long racemes of blue 



