blossom, with large, handsome catkins, while Cutler's willow was already
in fruit, and the crowberry likewise. The willow, like the birch, has
learned that the only way to live in such a place is to lie flat upon
the ground and let the wind blow over you. The other flowers noted at
the summit were one of the blueberries (_Vaccinium uliginosum_),
Bigelow's sedge, and the fragrant alpine holy-grass (_Hierochloa
alpina_). Why should this sacred grass, which Christians sprinkle in
front of their church doors on feast-days, be scattered thus upon our
higher mountain-tops, unless these places are indeed, as the Indian and
the ancient Hebrew believed, the special abode of the Great Spirit?

But the principal interest of this my second ascent of Mount Lafayette
was to be not botanical, but ornithological. We had seen nothing
noteworthy on the way up (I was not alone this time, though I have so
far been rude enough to ignore my companion); but while at the Eagle
Lakes, on our return, we had an experience that threw me into a nine
days' fever. The other man--one of the botanists of last year's
crew--was engaged in collecting viburnum specimens, when all at once I
caught sight of something red in a dead spruce on the mountain-side just
across the tiny lake. I leveled my glass, and saw with perfect
distinctness, as I thought, two pine grosbeaks in bright male
costume,--birds I had never seen before except in winter. Presently a
third one, in dull plumage, came into view, having been hidden till now
behind the bole. The trio remained in sight for some time, and then
dropped into the living spruces underneath, and disappeared. I lingered
about, while my companion and the black flies were busy, and was on the
point of turning away for good, when up flew two red birds and alighted
in a tree close by the one out of which the grosbeaks had dropped. But
a single glance showed that they were not grosbeaks, but white-winged
crossbills! And soon they, too, were joined by a third bird, in female
garb. Here was a pretty piece of confusion! I was delighted to see the
crossbills, having never before had the first glimpse of them, summer or
winter; but what was I to think about the grosbeaks? "Your determination
is worthless," said my scientific friend, consolingly; and there was no
gainsaying his verdict. Yet by what possibility could I have been so
deceived? The birds, though none too near, had given me an excellent
observation, and as long as t