es_ or _Phegopteris Dryopteris_). Our
grape-ferns or moonworts, on the other hand, covet more elbow-room. The
largest species (_Botrychium Virginianum_), although never growing in
anything like a bed or tuft, was nevertheless common throughout the
woods; you could gather a handful almost anywhere; but I found only one
plant of _Botrychium lanceolatum_, and only two of _Botrychium
matricariaefolium_ (and these a long distance apart), even though, on
account of their rarity and because I had never before seen the latter,
I spent considerable time, first and last, in hunting for them. What can
these diminutive hermits have ever done or suffered, that they should
choose thus to live and die, each by itself, in the vast solitude of a
mountain forest?

It was already the middle of July, so that I was too late for the better
part of the wood flowers. The oxalis (_Oxalis acetosella_), or
wood-sorrel was in bloom, however, carpeting the ground in many places.
I plucked a blossom now and then to admire the loveliness of the white
cup, with its fine purple lines and golden spots. If each had been
painted on purpose for a queen, they could not have been more daintily
touched. Yet here they were, opening by the thousand, with no human eye
to look upon them. Quite as common (Wordsworth's expression, "Ground
flowers in flocks," would have suited either) was the alpine enchanter's
night-shade (_Circaea alpina_); a most frail and delicate thing, though
it has little other beauty. Who would ever mistrust, to see it, that it
would prove to be connected in any way with the flaunting willow-herb,
or fire-weed? But such incongruities are not confined to the "vegetable
kingdom." The wood-nettle was growing everywhere; a juicy-looking but
coarse weed, resembling our common roadside nettles only in its
blossoms. The cattle had found out what I never should have
surmised,--having had a taste of its sting,--that it is good for food;
there were great patches of it, as likewise of the pale touch-me-not
(_Impatiens pallida_), which had been browsed over by them. It seemed to
me that some of the ferns, the hay-scented for example, ought to have
suited them better; but they passed these all by, as far as I could
detect. About the edges of the woods, and in favorable positions well up
the mountain-side, the flowering raspberry was flourishing; making no
display of itself, but offering to any who should choose to turn aside
and look at them a few blosso