the mosses. They are bright, cheerful little flowers, seldom found singly, but particularly social in their habits; twin blossoms 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, mingled 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-colored flowers lying in brilliant relief upon the dark rich groundwork. 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, spontaneous 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 culture. They are richer perhaps, more gorgeous, the effect 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
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THE GRACE OF FLOWERS.
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