THE GLACIER MEADOWS 129 



here and there with the purple cups and bells of 

 bryanthus and vaccinium. 



Go where you may, you everywhere find the lawn 

 divinely beautiful, as if Nature had fingered and 

 adjusted every plant this very day. The floating 

 grass panicles are scarcely felt in brushing through 

 their midst, so fine are they, and none of the flowers 

 have tall or rigid stalks. In the brightest places 

 you find three species of gentians with different 

 shades of blue, daisies pure as the sky, silky leaved 

 ivesias with warm yellow flowers, several species of 

 orthocarpus with blunt, bossy spikes, red and purple 

 and yellow ; the alpine goldenrod, pentstemon, and 

 clover, fragrant and honeyful, with their colors 

 massed and blended. Parting the grasses and look 

 ing more closely you may trace the branching of 

 their shining stems, and note the marvelous beauty 

 of their mist of flowers, the glumes and pales ex 

 quisitely penciled, the yellow dangling stamens, 

 and feathery pistils. Beneath the lowest leaves you 

 discover a fairy realm of mosses, hypnum, dicra- 

 num, polytrichum, and many others, their pre 

 cious spore-cups poised daintily on polished shafts, 

 curiously hooded, or open, showing the richly ornate 

 peristomas worn like royal crowns. Creeping liver 

 worts are here also in abundance, and several rare 

 species of fungi, exceedingly small, and frail, and 

 delicate, as if made only for beauty. Caterpillars, 

 black beetles, and ants roam the wilds of this lower 

 world, making their way through miniature groves 

 and thickets like bears in a thick wood. 



And how rich, too, is the life of the sunny air ! 

 Every leaf and flower seems to have its winged 



