198 Mountain and Forest Rambles. 



months in some mountain region would do much. There 

 we should grow insensibly more and more attached to the 

 very rocks, trees and bushes — to the bending branches and 

 outstretched twigs, which beset our path, or greet us in our 

 daily walks. Neither is it necessary to turn into the botanist, 

 to sympathise with the ever curious forms of vegetation 

 springing up around us ; a hearty love for the beautiful, and 

 an honest desire to perceive and acknowledge it, wherever 

 found, is all that is requisite. I can think of no better mode 

 for amateur horticulturists to pursue, than to educate them- 

 selves to a true natural taste, through study of the New Eng- 

 land flora, so profusely furnished in its mountain districts, 

 before they essay to plant and to lay out their grounds. 



It was through a pleasant acquaintance formed at Brattle- 

 borough, that I was enabled to examine for myself many of 

 the forms of vegetation, both the larger and the minutest, 

 which occur in sections of Vermont, which we visited togeth- 

 er. Its immediate vicinity is thus rich in a great variety of 

 fine trees, shrubs and flowers, with which its woods and 

 rocky hills abound. The early spring sun awakens the Epi- 

 gee^a repens, and tempts forth old and young in quest of its 

 roseate and fragrant corols. In the colder and mountain 

 woods this little plant does not bloom until quite late in the 

 spring, when its larger developed and pure white flowers are 

 very attractive. One of the earliest violets is the delicate 

 Fiola rostrata, or Long spurred violet ; and among the latest, 

 I found a beautiful crimson purple variety of Fiola cucullata, 

 which I have no doubt is a permanent sort, and from which 

 I obtained some autumnal flowers and perfect seed. The 

 rich woods afl'ord the Blue Cohosh, {Lebntice thalictroides,) 

 and the Purple Trillium, (Trillium erectum.) When this 

 latter plant is seen growing in the moist crevices of the rocks 

 in some ravine, it is of rare beauty. Erythronium america- 

 num springs up in company with Sanguinaria canadensis in 

 coincident inflorescence. Diclytra cucuUaria may be seen 

 on moist and dripping rocks ; and that handsome, delicate 

 vine cultivated in gardens. Climbing Fumitory or Smoke 

 Vine, occurs in mountain paths, — the Adlumza cirrhosa. 



