158 STARLIGHT AND SUNSHINE. 



spadeful of earth taken at random from the depths of the sod ? 

 A fire sweeps over the mountains; next year you will find its 

 black carbon bed afire with bloom that those calcined ledges 

 never saw before; but the wind has been taking care of that. 

 A railroad has perhaps just been desecrating the woods in your 

 vicinity. Follow its embankment and you may pick a bouquet 

 as rare to you as though from the Orient. The railroad track 

 seems to have especial attractions for a number of restless bohe- 

 mian plants that would seem to thrive on abnormal excitement. 

 The very oily refuse dropped from the engine invites many a 

 sleepless floral gamin, the ambition of whose lives would seem to 

 be to dodge the whirling train or duck beneath the cow-catcher, 

 while they challenge the coals and the clouds of steam. The 

 lithe purple toad-flax is one of these tough little bohemians, and 

 the tiny dwarf dandelion is a favorite companion. 



The prospecting miner knows how the lime or gold or zinc 

 or silver will blossom on the surface in those "indicative" flora, 

 the lucrative resources of the keen -eyed " douser," and doubtless 

 the frequent charm that gives the dip to the artful divining-rod. 



Scatter wood -ashes almost anywhere on your lawn, and the 

 chances are that you will receive thanks the following year in the 

 breath of white clover, while coal -ashes yield a response in their 

 own kind, as a casual botanical examination of vacant city lots 

 will attest ; I have found some of the rarest though not the most 

 beautiful species of our New England flowers among those un- 

 sightly ash -heaps. 



Indeed, let the botanist go into new fields anywhere, or even 

 across lots by a new path, and the rare bloom that he has been 

 seeking all his life is likely to carpet the ground before him. 



The beautiful pansy- like bird -foot violet is at best a not very 

 common species, and is often gregarious; but I once discovered 

 far up a mountain slope, where I would as soon have looked for 

 the Nile lotus, a bed ten feet square as blue as though spread 

 with an azure silk counterpane. I know a certain sand-hill that 

 is clothed in royal purple every year with the same flowers, for 

 they rival the harebell in their blue and the aster in their purple; 



