158 STARLIGHT AND SUNSHINE. 
spadeful of earth taken at random from the depths of the sod? 
A fire sweeps over the mountains; next year you will find its 
jblack carbon bed afire with bloom that those calcined ledges 
never saw before; but the wind has been taking care of that. 
A railroad has perhaps just been desecrating the woods in your 
vicinity. Follow its embankment and you may pick a bouquet 
‘as rare to you as though from the Orient. The railroad track 
seems to have especial attractions for a number of restless bohe- 
mian plants that would seem to thrive on abnormal excitement. 
The very oily refuse dropped from the engine invites many a 
‘sleepless floral gamin, the ambition of whose lives would seem to 
be to dodge the whirling train or duck beneath the cow-catcher, 
while they challenge the coals and the clouds of steam. The 
lithe purple toad-flax is one of these tough little bohemians, and 
the tiny dwarf dandelion is a favorite companion. 
The prospecting miner knows how the lime or gold or zinc 
or silver will blossom on the surface in those “indicative” flora, 
the lucrative resources of the keen-eyed “ douser,” and doubtless 
the frequent charm that gives the dip to the artful divining-rod. 
Scatter wood-ashes almost anywhere on your lawn, and the 
chances are that you will receive thanks the following year in the 
breath of white clover, while coal-ashes yield a response in their 
own kind, as a casual botanical examination of vacant city lots 
will attest; I have found some of the rarest though not the most 
beautiful species of our New England flowers among those un- 
sightly ash-heaps. 
Indeed, let the botanist go into new fields anywhere, or even 
across lots by a new path, and the rare bloom that he has been 
seeking all his life is likely to carpet the ground before him. 
The beautiful pansy-like bird-foot violet is at best a not very 
common species, and is often gregarious; but I once discovered 
far up a mountain slope, where I would as soon have looked for 
the Nile lotus, a bed ten feet square as blue as though spread 
with an azure silk counterpane. I know a certain sand-hill that 
is clothed in royal purple every year with the same flowers, for 
they rival the harebell in their blue and the aster in their purple; 
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