26 THE COMING OF SPRING 



flowers identify themselves so thoroughly with the 

 season's landscape that if some random questioner 

 asks, "What was that bank of scarlet that I saw 

 to-day among the rocks as I came on in the train? " 

 it is perfectly safe to answer "Columbines." 



"And the great patch of the same color in a 

 low pasture ? " 



"Painted Cup." 



"There were also masses of flowers of a pecu- 

 liar lilac shade that grew in broad waves along the 

 field edges and in the gullies beside the track. I 

 could see the color but not the shape. They were 

 not Violets, nor Iris, but something slender that 

 swayed in the grass." 



"Wild Geraniums." 



The Pink Azalea, or Pinxter- flower, as it is 

 known locally, is a shrub of May that carries a rosy 

 warmth of color among gray rocks and up bare hill- 

 sides until it is an inseparable part of the Spring 

 landscape. Akin to the Mountain Laurel and 

 Great Rose Bay or Rhododendron, and forerunner of 

 them, it is found in equal beauty growing along 

 shady wood roads and in clearings where first the 

 logger and then the charcoal-burner have not left 

 even a sapling. 



Blush -white or pink in the shade, in the open 



