172 THE VALLEY OF ENCHANTMENT 



is stored all manner of treasure for the botanist. Even 

 if you have no patience for genera and species, you cannot 

 fail to be struck by the contrast between the fragile and 

 delicate beauty of the northern flora and the massive, 

 gigantic features of the landscape which it adorns. You 

 may revel here in profusion of such fastidious flowers as 

 anxious amateurs at home coddle through a precarious 

 existence among the grosser growths of the herbaceous 

 border. Here are stately groups of purple larkspur and 

 rosy willow-herb, close battalions of lily of the /valley, with 

 skirmishing companies of its modest cousin Smilacina. 

 Here, too, the dainty Trientalis poises its solitary white 

 star upon a thread-like stem above a girdle of wan leaves, 

 and the winter-green (Pyrola) rears sturdy little columns 

 of waxy bells and pearly buds. The stonier places are 

 spangled with the quaint blossoms of the dwarf cornel, 

 each of them composed of four showy white bracts 

 encircling a cushion of deep purple or puce florets. Pure 

 white also, but with golden centres, are the blossoms of 

 that true forest nymph Dryas octopetala, which drapes 

 the rocks with abundant foliage like miniature oak- 

 leaves, but of deeper, glossier green. Here, also, a real 

 thrill lies in store for him who cares for the green things 

 of the earth, yet who, like myself, has never before seen 

 the tiny, trailing honeysuckle in its native sub-arctic 

 haunts the exquisite Linncea borealis. It abounds in 

 nooks among huge fallen boulders, rearing its twin 

 roseate bells and twining its fairy garlands among juniper, 

 bear-berries, blaeberries, and oak and beech ferns. Its 

 own loveliness apart, it commands a meed of special 

 reverence from every disciple of the great Master, Linnaeus, 

 for upon this lowly herb he bestowed his own name, this 



