AMONG THE WILD FLOWERS 19 



Our more choice wild flowers, the rarer and finer 

 spirits among them, please us by their individual 

 beauty and charm; others, more coarse and com- 

 mon, delight us by mass and profusion; we regard 

 not the one, but the many, as did Wordsworth his 

 golden daffodils : — 



" Ten thousand saw I at a glance 

 Tossing their heads in sprightly dance." 



Of such is the marsh marigold, giving a golden 

 lining to many a dark, marshy place in the leafless 

 April woods, or marking a little watercourse through 

 a greening meadow with a broad line of new gold. 

 One glances up from his walk, and his eye falls upon 

 something like fixed and heaped-up sunshine there 

 beneath the alders, or yonder in the freshening 

 field. 



In a measure, the same is true of our wild sun- 

 flowers, lighting up many a neglected bushy fence- 

 corner or weedy roadside with their bright, beaming 

 faces. The evening primrose is a coarse, rankly 

 growing plant; but, in late summer, how many an 

 untrimmed bank is painted over by it with the 

 most fresh and delicate canary yellow ! 



We have one flower which grows in vast multi- 

 tudes, yet which is exquisitely delicate and beautiful 

 in and of itself: I mean the houstonia, or bluets. 

 In May, in certain parts of the country, I see vast 

 sheets of it; in old, low meadow bottoms that have 

 never known the plow, it covers the ground like 

 a dull bluish or purplish snow which has blown 

 unevenly about. In the mass it is not especially 



