168 SPRING AT THE CAPITAL. 



growing immediately beneath its broad leafy top. By 

 the same run grow water-cresses and two kinds of 

 anemones, the Pennsylvania and the grove an em 

 one. The bloodroot is very common at the foot of al 

 most every warm slope in the Rock Creek woods, and, 

 where the wind has tucked it up well with the cover- 

 lid of dry leaves, makes its appearance almost as soon 

 as the liverwort. It is singular how little warmth is 

 necessary to encourage these earlier flowers to put 

 forth ! It would seem as if some influence must come 

 on in advance underground and get things ready, so 

 that when the outside temperature is propitious, they 

 at once venture out. I have found the bloodroot 

 when it was still freezing two or three nights in the 

 week ; and have known at least three varieties of 

 early flowers to be buried in eight inches of snow. 



Another abundant flower in the Rock Creek region 

 is the spring beauty. Like most others it grows in 

 streaks. A few paces from where your attention is 

 monopolized by violets or arbutus, it is arrested by 

 the claytonia, growing in such profusion that it is im- 

 possible to set the foot down without crushing the 

 flowers. Only the forenoon walker sees them in all 

 fc heir beauty, as later in the day their eyes are closed r 

 tnd their pretty heads drooped in slumber. In only 

 one locality do I find the ladies'-slipper, a yellow 

 variety. The flowers that overleap all bounds in this 

 section are the houstonias. By the 1st of April they 

 are very noticeable in warm, damp places along the 

 borders of the woods and in half-cleared fields, but by 



