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 

 viscosurri), 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 join tweed. Six of these mallow, 

 cinque-foil, aster, cone-flower, fall dande- 

 lion, and jointweed were noticed only at 

 Nahant ; and it is 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 



