NORTH AMERICAN FLORA. 265 



consider that these great roads run east and west, that the 

 prevalent winds are from the west, that a freight-train left 

 unguarded was not long ago blown on for more than one 

 hundred miles before it could be stopped, not altogether on 

 down grades, and that the bared and mostW unkempt borders 

 of these railways form capital seed-beds and nursery-ground 

 for such plants. 



Returning now from this side issue, let me advert to another 

 and, I judge, a very pleasant experience which the botanist 

 and the cultivator may have on first visiting the American 

 shores. At almost every step he comes upon old acquaintances, 

 upon shrubs and trees and flowering herbs, mostly peculiar to 

 this country, but with which he is familiar in the grounds and 

 gardens of his home. Great Britain is especially hospitable 

 to American trees and shrubs. There those both of the east- 

 ern and western sides of our continent flourish side by side. 

 Here they almost wholly refuse such association. But the 

 most familiar and longest-established repi'esentatives of our 

 flora (certain western annuals excepted) were drawn from the 

 Atlantic coast. Among them are the Virginia Creeper or 

 Ampelopsis, almost as commonly grown in Europe as here, 

 and which, I think, displays its autumnal crimson as brightly 

 there as along the borders of its native woods where you will 

 everywhere meet with it ; the Red and Sugar Maples, which 

 give the notable autumnal glow to our northern woods, but 

 rarely make much show in Europe, perhaps for lack of sharp 

 contrast between summer and autumn ; the ornamental Eri- 

 caceous shrubs, Kalmias, Azaleas, Rhododendrons, and the 

 like, specially called American plants in England, although 

 all the Rhododendrons of the finer sort are half Asiatic, the 

 hardy American species having been crossed and recrossed 

 with more elegant but tender Indian species. 



As to flowering herbs, somewhat of the delight with which 

 an American first gathers wild Primroses and Cowslips and 

 Foxgloves and Daisies in Europe, may be enjoyed by the 

 European botanist when he comes upon our Trilliums and 

 Sanguinaria, Cypripediums and Dodecatheon, our species of 

 Phlox, Coreopsis, etc., so familiar in his gardens ; or when, 



