MAY FLOWERS. 39 
The summer traveler among the White Mountains 
of New Hampshire or the Adirondacks of New York 
can scarcely fail to notice, as he climbs the mountain 
paths in the moss-floored woods, mats of a delicate 
trailing evergreen, with small short-petioled leaves, and 
bearing here and there a snow-white berry. He may 
never see it in flower, but he recognizes the creeping 
snowberry (Chiogenes serpyllifolia, Salisb.), one of the 
rarer plants of this region and rare further south except 
in the mountain regions. 
Worcester County is especially rich in species of 
the great order Ericacee. There are thirty-four so far 
discovered, a number surpassing that of such States as 
Vermont, Rhode Island, Indiana, Nebraska and Texas. 
A few of them are of world-wide distribution. One of 
these is the bearberry or mountain cranberry (Arcéo- 
staphylos Uva-ursi, Spreng.), a native of northern Eu- 
rope, Siberia and North America. Its foliage is much 
admired for its glossy greenness, and its red berries fur- 
nish food in winter to those birds, as the quail and 
the robin, which can then find insect food only with 
great difficulty. 
One of the most beautiful and at the same time 
very rare members of this family, one whose presence 
we hardly dared to hope for, is the water Andromeda 
(Andromeda polifolia, L.). It was for this modest 
and delicate plant, which is a native of the north of 
