32 THE FALL OF THE YEAR 



never seen anything at all that is worth seeing. The 

 witch-hazel bush, all yellow with its strange blossoms 

 in November, is worth seeing, worth taking a great 

 deal of trouble to see. 



There is a little flower in southern New Jersey 

 called pyxie, or flowering moss, a very rare and hid- 

 den little thing ; and I know an old botanist who 

 traveled five hundred miles just to have the joy of 

 seeing that little flower 

 growing in the sandy 

 swamp along Silver Run. 

 If you have never seen the 

 witch-hazel in bloom, it 

 will pay you to travel five 

 hundred and five miles to see it. But you won't need 

 to go so far, unless you live beyond the prai- 

 ries, for the witch-hazel grows from Nova Scotia 

 to Florida and west to Minnesota and Alabama. 



There is one flower that, according to Mr. John 

 Muir (and he surely knows ! ), it will pay one to 

 travel away up into the highest Sierra to see. It is 

 the fragrant Washington lily, " the finest of all the 

 Sierra lilies," he says. "Its bulbs are buried in 

 shaggy chaparral tangles, I suppose for safety from 

 pawing bears ; and its magnificent panicles sway and 

 rock over the top of the rough snow-pressed bushes, 

 while big, bold, blunt-nosed bees drone and mumble 

 in its polleny bells. A lovely flower worth going 

 hungry and footsore endless miles to see. The whole 



