FLORA OF THE MOUNTAIN. 249 



sides in those "bright September days." The Gnaphalium, 

 Coreopsis, and Rudbeckia, mingle their silver and gold 

 with the pageantry which heralds the advent of autumn 

 and waves the first farewell to departing summer. Winter 

 concludes the story of the flower, and its "little life is 

 rounded with a sleep." 



Need the observation be made that the full and elaborate 

 biography of the flowers of the mountain, with their special 

 habits, phases of life-manifestation, and instincts, would be 

 a labor of delight ? Here, again, the real lover of nature 

 will find that she is ever true and faithful to her accredited 

 devotees. Coy and cruel, with a face of adamant and steel 

 to selfishness and profane intrusion, she is approachable, 

 gentle, and pliant, to earnestness and love. Thus it will be 

 found, that the life and habits of one plant, read and studied 

 with devout and careful seeking, is a key to the history of 

 earth and air, and a pass-word to the intellectual throne of 

 the knowledge of the realms of organic life. 



SERIES II. PLANTS WITHOUT FLOWERS. 



Leaving the first great division of the vegetable king- 

 dom, the series of Phsenogamous Botany, or those having 

 definite and clearly marked organs for the reproduction 

 of specific forms, and descending in this chain of organ- 

 isms, we arrive at another order of plants with marked 

 and distinctive features, called the Cryptogamous, or flower- 

 less plants, or those the mechanism of whose reproduction 

 was formerly supposed to be concealed, or even non-extant. 

 The first division embraces the imperial forms, the great 

 trees of the ages, the myriads of flowers which beautify the 

 earth ; also the useful plants, the companions of man, the 

 proper bread or human-flesh grasses, or cerealia, plants fur- 

 nished with easily discoverable generative systems, and all 

 propagated by definitely organized seeds. The other divi- 

 sion (Cryptogarnic) is a more humble series, organizations 



