1892.] ESSAYS. 145 



far away to the north. Again, Lake Quinsigaraond and the 

 Shrewsbury Hills seem to be a dividing line between the flora 

 of the low lying Atlantic plain and of the rolling hill region of 

 the interior. In the neighborhood of Worcester, we have a 

 comparatively heavy soil with underlying clay ; while on the 

 other side of the Leicester ridge, especially to tiie southwest, 

 there is much sand and gravel, each locality with its character- 

 istic plants. Tiirougliout the country, the entire surface consists 

 of diversified hill and valley, rocky pasture and shaded glen, 

 dry gravel bank and well watered meadow ; while a multitude 

 of ponds, with their tributary springs sparkle in the landscape, 

 lending variety to the scene, and variously modifying the forms of 

 life which dwell on their banks. 



Many of the ponds are as yet uncontaminated, and upon their 

 borders or in their shallows are found the finer plants of that 

 primitive time when the speckled trout swarmed in their waters, 

 and the fish-hawk darted upon him from on high. Others have 

 become the receptacles of city sewage, dye-house refuse, ofFal of 

 slaughter-houses, and the waste of saw- and planing-mills. Here 

 the white waterlily, the sweet violet, and the crowfoot, have 

 given way to the spatter dock, rank pickerel-weed and other 

 plants of low degree. 



The roadside has its particular flowers, and the railroad banks 

 especially harbor their characteristic flora. It is over these last 

 that many an alien has found its way into our territory. 



Wachusett has suflicient altitude to give us a semi-alpinc flora, 

 including, among others, the mountain maple, Potentilla triden- 

 tata, and the stinking currant, while a few other hills give us 

 plants usually found further to the north. Probably no plant, 

 indigenous with us, has so entirely disappeared that it may not 

 be found in some hidden place ; and in one way or another, in 

 packages of seeds, in bales of hay, in imported wool, wafted 

 on tiie winds or brought hither by birds, perhai)s hundreds of 

 new varieties have been introduced since the occupation by 

 white men. 



Now, when 3'ou ask an unconcerned person to say how many 

 difierent plants he knows, twenty or forty or possibly one 

 hundred completes his list. And when you tell him that more 



