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shape like a horse's foot, that some hundred or more years^ 

 ago, Fabp.icius the botanist called it " Hippopodium ; " but 

 Haller shortly afterward preferred that it should bear the 

 honored name of Buxbaum, who discovered it in Russia. It 

 certainly sounds much prettier to call it Buxbaum 's leafless 

 moss, for so would the scientific nonemclature imply ; and 

 " leafless " was it long supposed until that illustrious botan- 

 ist, Robert Brown, of England, by analyzation of the struc- 

 ture found that the scales which are to be detected upon its 

 stem are veritable leaves. You must look very carefully 

 and may find growing on a space of bare ground your hand 

 could cover, perhaps four or five ; if ver}^ successful, perhaps 

 even a dozen. We found three only, but the plant is an an- 

 nual and doubtless many more can be searched for and found 

 close by. Yet all describers call it " rare " and though well 

 known in the northern regions of the globe, still it is " rare," 

 having been seen in three or four localities in Scotland, 

 throughout northern Europe, in Asia and in several parts of 

 New-England and North America. 



But there are many other objects beside plants, which are 

 pronounced " rare " requiring only a patient and persever- 

 ing observation to find them, and often near at hand. Be- 

 side the attraction to the curious observer of plants and flow- 

 ers, the apex of Ship Rock should be attained by means of a 

 safe iron ladder, from which eminence the delighted eye can 

 take in a wide landscape bearing no honored name indeed 

 but of rare beauty, fine glimpses caught of the far off blue 

 ocean and steepled towns and country residences, and dark 

 pine woods and barren hills crowned with loose boulders of 

 respectable size, indicating amidst so much repose, the fiercer 

 epochs when many a crystal lake and lovely pond at their 

 bases were scooped out by grinding masses of superincum- 

 bent drift. To one of the loveliest of these small sheets of 

 clear w^ater several of the company partook themselves, 

 through paths in the thick woods, gathering bouquets of the 

 wild flowers, which grew profusely on either liand. An 



