CONSIDER THE LILIES 29 



wayside, in rock-crevices by the torrent's edge, and 

 high up on the mountainside and precipice this Lily 

 in full bloom greets the weary wayfarer. Not in 

 twos and threes; but in hundreds, in thousands, aye, 

 in tens of thousands. Its slender stems, each two to 

 four feet tall, flexible and tense as steel, overtopping 

 the coarse grass and scrub and crowned with one to 

 several large, funnel-shaped flowers more or less wine- 

 colored without, pure white and lustrous on the face, 

 clear canary-yellow within the tube and each stamen 

 tipped with a golden anther. The air in the cool of 

 the morning and in the evening is laden with soft, 

 delicious perfume exhaled from each bloom. For a 

 brief season this lonely, semi-desert region is trans- 

 formed by this Lily into a veritable fairyland. 



Since we have, figuratively, traveled so far to see 

 one Lily in its home surroundings, let us in the same 

 manner journey a hundred miles or so farther and to 

 the southwest, and there, in valleys clothed with 

 coarse grasses and low shrubs and under conditions 

 but little less severe than the preceding and in equal 

 abundance, we find Mrs. Charles S. Sargent's Lily (L. 

 Sargentiae) reigning supreme. Westward some few 

 miles and on the margin of shrubberies at eight thou- 

 sand feet above sea level and on the very edge of the 

 Thibetan grasslands grows Mrs. Bayard Thayer's Lily 



