XXXI] WASHINGTON TO SAN FRANCISCO 143 



four days with Mr. Dury at Avondale, where he has a small 

 house and some land. There were some patches of the 

 original forest near, with moist little valleys, and here I saw 

 for the first time the American spring vegetation in its full 

 beauty. The woods were full of an anemone-like flower 

 (Thalictrum anemonoides\ the curious Dutchman's breeches 

 {Dicentra cucullaria) in continuous sheets, the spring beauty 

 {Claytonia pulchella) equally abundant, with patches of Phlox 

 divaricata, the dwarf blue Delphinium tricorne, the little blue- 

 eyed Mary {Colliitsia verna), yellow, blue, and white violets, 

 jfeffersonia diphylla, and many other flowers strange to 

 English eyes. During one walk I found a fine plant of 

 Mertensia virginica in flower. But though these were wonder- 

 fully attractive to me, owing to there being so many forms of 

 flower quite unknown in England, the actual amount of floral 

 colour and beauty was not to be compared with our own. 

 There was nothing to equal the sheets of bluebells, prim- 

 roses, and anemones in our woods, the buttercups and early 

 orchises of our meadows, or the marsh-marigolds of our 

 marshes and river-banks. This subject of the comparative 

 abundance and the striking differences between North 

 America and Europe in this respect I have discussed some- 

 what fully in my Fortnightly Review article on " English 

 and American Flowers," reprinted in my " Studies, Scientific 

 and Social " (vol. i. p. 199). 



One evening when at Mr. Dury's an interviewer called, 

 and showed the most remarkable ignorance. He thought 

 Darwin's theory was limited to the change of monkeys into 

 men ; that Englishmen were all either Lord Dundrearys or 

 roughs ; that the lowest Cockney talk was the " English 

 accent," which he was much surprised that I did not possess ; 

 and, above all, that America was the finest and the greatest 

 country in the world, and that all who were born elsewhere 

 were to be pitied and condoled with. But this was quite an 

 exceptional type. All my other American interviewers were 

 educated men and knew their business. 



My friend Mr. Dury had had the rare experience 

 of being bitten by a dead rattlesnake with very painful 



