EARTH COVERINGS 



285 



it is silvered with wild oats, yellowed again 

 with golden-rod or turned blue with asters. 

 Finally, all is changed to russet and gray by 

 frost, and at last buried under a white sheet of 

 snow. The tall pine on the hill-top that 

 has but one dress the whole year round how 

 much less care nature seems to have bestowed 

 upon it than upon the pasture with its flowers ! 

 Yet we admire the pine, and perhaps care little 

 for the pasture. We walk across the latter, 

 treading the delicate grasses under foot, whip- 

 ping off the heads of the daisies with our 

 walking-stick, and thinking, perhaps, with 

 Peter Bell that the meanest flower that blows 

 is simply the meanest flower ; but nature knows 

 nothing of one creation meaner or nobler than 

 another. It builds each thing perfect after its 

 kind. Commonplace pasture and Olympian 

 grove, mountain-crag, dense forest, gay flower, 

 and lowly earth coverings are all of equal rank 

 in nature's book of gold. Each has its measure 

 of glory, each its peculiar beauty. 



The cultivated grasses that cover the earth 

 in spots, such as the fields of timothy and red 

 clover, seem to have less charm than the wild 

 growths, though no one can deny their beauty. 

 The foaming whiteness of the blossoming buck- 



Cultivated 

 growths. 



