A SEARCH FOR THE PLEIADES 257 
vations for the bookmakers. Such talk links us 
with the Rocky Mountains, with Scott’s novels, 
and with the great French forests in old days 
of royal hunting. All the “venerers, prickers, 
and verderers”’ of romance have now come 
down to a few plain incidents like these, but 
no matter; so long as there is a squirrel on a 
bough or a partridge in the woods, it will keep 
us in contact with that healthful outdoor na- 
ture which is the background of all our civili- 
zation. Thus discoursing, at any rate, we 
toiled up the mountain beneath an increasing 
shade. It was pretty to observe the graceful 
effect of the increased elevation on the wild- 
flowers. At the base, this being August 2, I 
sought in vain among the wood-sorrel and 
dwarf-cornel leaves for a single blossom ; when 
half way up we saw them beginning to spangle 
the green beds; and at the top they were in 
fullest bloom, amid the linnza and mountain 
cranberry. It was strange also to see meadow 
plants, like the snakehead and American helle- 
bore, growing abundantly in dry places at an 
elevation of four thousand feet; and even to 
find lingering blossoms of the latter, which we 
are accustomed to regard as an early spring 
flower. The longer one lives, the less rigid ap- 
pear the rules and forms of external nature ; 
she seems to bid her wild-flowers bloom where 
