104 
RURAL HOURS. 
spots spread, and the whole beny is red ; and, later still, in Sep- 
tember, it takes a beautiful ruby color, and is nearly transparent ; 
in which condition we have seen them as late as the first of De- 
cember. The false spikenard goes through much the same pro- 
cess, but its fruit is more frequently blasted, and the name of 
bead-ruby is here confined to the smaller two-leaved plant. The 
pretty httle lily of the valley, that charming flower oi ‘^he 
gardens, grows wild in the Southern Alleghanies, but it is 
not found among the plants of these northernmost ridges of the 
chain. 
We were walking in a beautiful grove where the wood had 
been only partially cleared, leaving many fine trees standing, min- 
gled with the stumps of others long since felled. The mossy 
roots of these mouldering old stumps are choice places for the 
early flowers ; one often finds the remains of an old oak, or pine, 
or chestnut, encircled by a beautiful border of this kind, mosses 
and flowers blended together in a way which art can never equal. 
During many successive springs, we have been in the habit of 
watching the flowers as they unfold upon these mossy hillocks. 
As usual, they are now daintily sprinkled with blossoms, for the 
soil is rich as possible in such spots. We amused ourselves with 
counting the diflerent kinds of flowers growing on several of these 
little knolls. In one instance, we found fifteen different plants, 
besides the grasses, in a -narrow circle about the swelling roots, 
/ 
six or eight feet in breadth ; around another we counted eighteen 
varieties ; another showed twenty-two ; and a fourth had six-and- 
twenty kinds. The groundwork is usually made up of mosses of 
three or four varieties and shades, all very beautiful, and blended 
with these are the silvery leaves of the pearly everlastings. Vio- 
