THE GRACE OF FLOWERS. 
87 
the mosses. They are bright, cheerful Httle flowers, seldom 
found singly, but particularly social in their habits ; twin blos- 
soms very often grow on the same stalk, and at times you find 
as many as four or five ; we have occasionally gathered clusters 
of a dozen or eighteen blossoms in one tuft, upon three or four 
stalks. They bloom here in profusion on the borders of the woods, 
by the road-side, and in some fields ; we found them a day or 
two since, mmgled with the dandelions, in a low meadow by the 
river ; but they are especially fond of growing among the mosses, 
the most becoming position they could choose, their warmly-col- 
ored flowers lying in brilliant relief upon the dark rich ground- 
work. How beautiful is this exquisite native grace of the flowers, 
seen in all their habits and positions ! They know nothing of 
vanity, its trivial toils and triumphs ! In unconscious, spontane- 
ous beauty, they live their joy-giving lives, and yet how all but 
impossible for man to add to their perfection in a single point ! 
In their habits of growth, this innate grace may be particularly 
observed ; there is a unity, a fitness, in the individual character 
of each plant to be traced most closely, not only in form, or leaf, 
and stem, but also in the position it chooses, and all the various 
accessories of its brief existence. It is this that gives to the field 
and wood flowers a charm beyond those of the garden. Pass 
through the richest and most brilliant parterre in the country, 
with every advantage which labor, expense, science, and thought 
can bestow, and you will find there no one plant that is not shorn 
of some portion of its native grace, a penalty which it pays for the 
honors of cuUiire. They are richer perhaps, more gorgeous, the 
efi'ect of the whole is more striking, but singly, they are not so 
wholly beautiful. Go out in the month of May and June into the 
