[Illustration: _Of A Cluster Of Small Five-Petaled Flowers With Blunt Tips Growing Very Close To The Ground._]

In particular I remarked beds of velvet moss, which bore a pink blossom, in form somewhat like this.

Then there was a kind of low, starry gentian, of a bright metallic blue; I tried to paint it afterwards, but neither ultramarine nor any color I could find would represent its brilliancy; it was a kind of living brightness. I examined the petals to see how this effect was produced, and it seemed to be by a kind of prismatic arrangement of the small round particles of which they were composed. The shape of the flower was somewhat like this.

[Illustration: _of a cluster of small five petaled flowers with sharp points growing on short stalks near the ground._]

I spread down my pocket handkerchief, and proceeded to see how many varieties I could gather, and in a very small circle W. and I collected eighteen. Could I have thought, when I looked from my window over this bleak region, that any thing so perfectly lovely as this little purple witch, for example, was to be found there? It was quite a significant fact. There is no condition of life, probably, so dreary that a lowly and patient seeker cannot find its flowers.

[Illustration: _of a clump of a small flowering plant attached to what appears to be its rhizome._]

I began to think that I might be contented even there. But while I was looking I was so sickened by headache, and disagreeable feelings arising from the air, that I often had to lie down on the sunny side of the bank.

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