Page:A Thousand-Mile Walk To The Gulf.djvu/64

Rh of Burns’s poems, Milton’s Paradise Lost, and a small New Testament, he waited for me, handed back my bag, and returned down the hill, saying that he had forgotten something.

I found splendid growths of shining-leaved Ericaceæ [heathworts] for which the Alleghany Mountains are noted. Also ferns of which Osmunda cinnamomea [Cinnamon Fern] is the largest and perhaps the most abundant. Osmunda regalis [Flowering Fern] is also common here, but not large. In Wood’s and Gray’s Botany Osmunda cinnamomea is said to be a much larger fern than Osmunda Claytoniana, This I found to be true in Tennessee and southward, but in Indiana, part of Illinois, and Wisconsin the opposite is true. Found here the beautiful, sensitive Schrankia, or sensitive brier. It is a long, prickly, leguminous vine, with dense heads of small, yellow fragrant flowers.