THE AMERICAN BOTANIST. 
47 
On the wooded slopes I found several species of pyrola. 
One of these (P. picta) has fine dark green leaves mottled 
and blotched with white. Other members of the heath 
family noted in the dense woods were pipsissewa, Indian 
pipe and pine drops. Neither of the last two named had 
begun to grow to any extent, but the pale upward-grow- 
ing shoots of the Indian pipe could be found at no great 
depth down in the mold among the blackened stems oi 
last year. The tall brown stems of the pine drops are 
striking objects all through the fall and winter. They 
then shed an abundance of fine chaffy seeds. Under a 
small lens these seeds are transformed into objects of un- 
expected beauty. They are surrounded with a thin netted 
membrane more delicate than an^- insect's wing, and it 
glistens with a glow of iridescent colors. 
Pipsissewa is indeed a lover of the winter, for its shin- 
ing evergreen leaves seem never so fresh and green as 
when they peep out from the snow and ice of their wintry 
covering. In places the trailing evergreen stems of the 
twin flower {Linnsea horealis) covered the forest floor or 
spread a thick green mantle of beautj- over decaying 
stumps and logs. This little favorite of the immortal 
Linneeus was not yet in flower. 
Another beautiful child of the great north woods 
which I found quite abundant on the slopes of Long 
Mountain was that delicate little orchid Ca/rpso borealis. 
There are those who have seemed to see in the beautiful 
things of nature only a product of the "struggle for 
existence" and "survival of the fittest." As I gaze on 
some beautiful flower like this little orchid of the forest, 
there comes the thought that the struggle for life might 
have produced a beautiful flower but not one like this. 
There is something more than that behind the beauty of 
the lily and the perfume of the rose. Can the struggle for 
Hfe account for the beauty of the Adiantum fern, or the 
pearly luster of the shell which grew on the dark ocean 
floor a thousand fathoms from the light of day, or for the 
golden, bronze, and scarlet glory of our autumn woods, 
