IX 



MORMON LILIES l 



LILIES are rare in Utah; so also are their 

 companions the ferns and orchids, chiefly on 

 account of the fiery saltness of the soil and cli- 

 mate. You may walk the deserts of the Great 

 Basin in the bloom time of the year, all the way 

 across from the snowy Sierra to the snowy 

 Wahsatch, and your eyes will be filled with 

 many a gay malva, and poppy, and abronia, 

 and cactus, but you may not see a single true 

 lily, and only a very few liliaceous plants of 

 any kind. Not even in the cool, fresh glens of 

 the mountains will you find these favorite 

 flowers, though some of these desert ranges 

 almost rival the Sierra in height. Neverthe- 

 less, in the building and planting of this grand 

 Territory the lilies were not forgotten. Far 

 back in the dim geologic ages, when the sedi- 

 ments of the old seas were being gathered and 

 outspread in smooth sheets like leaves of a 

 book, and when these sediments became dry 

 land, and were baked and crumbled into the 

 sky as mountain-ranges; when the lava-floods 

 of the Fire Period were being lavishly poured 

 * Letter dated "Salt Lake, July, 1877." [Editor.] 

 126 



