58 THE HAUNTS OF FLOWERS. 



houseleek prosper in similar places, growing freshly upon 

 ledges and heaps of stones, which have been carted by 

 the farmer into abrupt hollows, mixed with the soil and 

 weeds of the garden. In shady corners we find the colts- 

 foot, the gill, a very pretty labiate, and some of the 

 foreign mints. Spikenard and tansy delight in more 

 open places, along with certain other medicinal herbs 

 introduced by ancient simplers. These plants are seldom 

 found in woods or primitive pastures. 



Wild plants of rare beauty abound in a recent clearing, 

 especially in a tract from which a growth of hard wood 

 has been felled, if afterwards the soil has remained undis- 

 turbed. In the deep woods the darkness will not permit 

 any sort of undergrowth except a few plants of peculiar 

 habit and constitution. But after the removal of the 

 wood, all kinds of indigenous plants, whose seeds have 

 been wafted there by the winds or carried there by the 

 birds, will revel in the clearing, until they are choked by 

 a new growth of trees and shrubs. Strawberries and sev- 

 eral species of brambles spring up there as if by magic, 

 and cover the stumps of the trees with their vines and 

 their racemes of black and scarlet fruit; and hundreds 

 of beautiful flowering plants astonish us by their pres- 

 ence, as if they were a new creation. We must look to 

 these clearings, and to those tracts in which the trees 

 have been destroyed by fire, more than to any others, for 

 the exact method of nature. Among the first plants 

 that would appear after the burning, beside the lilia- 

 ceous tribe, whose bulbs lie too deep in the soil to be 

 destroyed, are those with downy seeds, which are imme- 

 diately sowed there by the winds. One very conspicu- 

 ous and beautiful plant, the spiked willow herb, is so 

 abundant in any tract that has been burned, the next year 

 after the conflagration, that in the West and in the British 

 Provinces it has gained the name of fireweed. 



