Flowers in Colorado. 



Next after these comes the mountain hyacinth, popularly 

 so called for no other reason than that its odor is like the 

 odor of the hyacinth. It is in reality a lily. It is the most 

 ethereal and delicate of all our wild flowers, and yet it 

 springs up, like the commonest of weeds, in the com- 

 monest of places ; even in the dusty edges of the streets, 

 so close to the ruts that wheels crush it, it lifts its snowy 

 chalice. On neglected opens, in pathways trodden every 

 day, you may see these lilies by dozens, trampled down ; 

 and yet at first sight you would take them for rare and 

 fragile exotics. The blossom is star-shaped, almost pre- 

 cisely like the white jessamine, and of such fine and 

 transparent texture that it is almost impossible to press it ; 

 one, two, sometimes half a dozen flowers, rising only two 

 or three inches high from the centre of a little bunch of 

 slender green leaves, in shape like the blades of the old- 

 fashioned garden-pink, but of a bright green color. It is 

 one of the purest looking blossoms. To see it as we do, 

 growing lavishly in highways, trodden under foot of man 

 and beast, is a perpetual marvel which is never quite free 

 from pain. 



II 



