26 ROCKS. 



fest facility which abrupt situations afford both for pros- 

 pect and for pleasant secluded retreats. Large clefts 

 produced by the parting of the two sides of an enor- 

 mous rock furnish dells, often perfect gardens of wild- 

 flowers, bursting on the sight like an oasis on a dry 

 waste. In these places there is always a remarkable 

 verdure, as the rains that pour down the slopes conduct 

 fertility to the soil at their base. A rocky surface, there- 

 fore, is productive of a greater variety of shrubs and wild- 

 flowers than a plain or rolling country of similar soil 

 and climate. 



There are many plants whose native localities are the 

 tops and sides of rocky cliffs and precipices. Such are the 

 saxifrage, the cistus, the toadflax, and the beautiful pedate 

 violet. The graceful Canadian columbine is found chiefly 

 among the clefts of rocks, like a little tender animal, nest- 

 ling under their protection, and drawing nourishment 

 from the soil that has accumulated in their hollows. To 

 satisfy ourselves of the number and variety of plants that 

 may grow spontaneously upon a single rock, let us con- 

 struct one in fancy thus enamelled by the hand of Nature. 



We will picture to ourselves a craggy precipice, rising 

 thirty or forty feet out of a wet meadow, and forming 

 in its irregular ascent many oblique and perpendicular 

 sides, which have collected upon their upper surface sev- 

 eral inches of soil. A grove of pines and birches covers 

 the summit, with an undergrowth of various shrubs, such 

 as the whortleberry, the wood-pyrus, the spiraea, and 

 the mountain andromeda. Here, too, the bay berry and 

 sweet fern mingle their fragrance with the odors of the 

 pines. The rocks, in the driest places, are covered with a 

 bedding of gray lichen, which is a perfect hygrometer, 

 breaking like glass under our footsteps when the atmos- 

 phere is dry, but yielding like velvet when it contains the 

 least moisture. The cup-moss grows abundantly along 



