EARTIL COVERINGS 
285 
it is silvered with wild oats, yellowed again 
with golden-rod or turned blue with asters. 
Finally, all is changed to russet and gray by 
frost, and at last buried under a white sheet of 
snow. The tall pine on the hill-top that 
has but one dress the whole year round—how 
much less care nature seems to have bestowed 
upon it than upon the pasture with its flowers ! 
Yet we admire the pine, and perhaps care little 
for the pasture. We walk across the latter, 
treading the delicate grasses under foot, whip- 
ping off the heads of the daisies with our 
walking-stick, and thinking, perhaps, with 
Peter Bell that the meanest flower that blows 
is simply the meanest flower ; but nature knows 
nothing of one creation meaner or nobler than 
another. It builds each thing perfect after its 
kind. Commonplace pasture and Olympian 
grove, mountain-crag, dense forest, gay flower, 
and lowly earth coverings are all of equal tank 
in nature’s book of gold. Each has its measure 
of glory, each its peculiar beauty. 
The cultivated grasses that cover the earth 
in spots, such as the fields of timothy and red 
clover, seem to have less charm than the wild 
growths, though no one can deny their beauty. 
The foaming whiteness of the blossoming buck- 
Nature’s 
care. 
Cultivated 
growths. 
