FLORULA. 
143 
poor gentian, stunted and reduced, but still, like every- 
thing around it, in all the perfection of miniature pro- 
portions. 
As this mossy parterre approached the rooky walls 
that hemmed it in, tussocks of sedges and coarse grass 
began to show themselves, mixed with heaths and 
birches ; and still further on, at the margin of the horse- 
shoe, and fringing its union with the stupendous piles 
of debris, came an annulus of Arctic shrubs and trees. 
Shrubs and trees ! the words recall a smile, for they 
only typed those natives of another zone. The poor 
things had lost their uprightness, and learned to escape 
the elements by trailing along the rocks. Few rose 
above my shoes, and none above my ankles ; yet shady 
alleys and heaven-pointing avenues could not be more 
impressive examples of creative adaptation. Here I 
saw the bleaberry ( Vaccinium uliginosum) in flower 
and in fruit — could cover it with a wine-glass ; the 
wild honeysuckle [Azalea procumbens) of our Penn- 
sylvania woods — I could stick the entire plant in my 
button-hole ; the Andromeda tetragona, like a green 
marabou feather. 
Strangest among these transformations came the 
willows. One, the Salix herhacea, hardly larger than 
a trefoil clover ; another, the >S'. glauca, like a young 
althea, just bursting from its seed. A third, the S. 
lanata, a triton among these boreal minnows, looked 
like an unfortunate garter-snake, bound here and there 
by claw-like radicles, which, unable to penetrate the 
inhospitable soil, had spread themselves out upon the 
surface — traps for the broken lichens and fostering 
moss which formed its scanty mould. 
I had several opportunities, while taking sextant el- 
evations of the headlands, to measure the moss-beds 
