Page:Poems of Nature and Life.djvu/425

Rh predominate over the blue and the yellow; they are for the most part scentless, because fragrance, to reach its highest perfection, requires a warm and dry climate. Stems of woody fibre yield also to the succulent, the rough and spinous to the smooth, the long to the short, annual plants to perennial ones, and all perhaps for similar reasons, namely, their dependence for nutrition rather upon moisture than the soil, and the brief time allotted to their development. Not only are the alpine species larger-flowered than their congeners in the lowlands, but even species which are common to a great range of latitude, hurried to perfection by a short summer and the constant trickling of melted snows, flourish in mountain districts with the most vigor and in greatest abundance. Nowhere will one find the Azaleas more splendid than on the summit of the Wachusett Mountain. Still farther north other species occur. In the elevated regions about the Moosehead Lake, the swamps are filled with the Rhodora Canadensis in extraordinary perfection. The very islands of the lake are red with it. Different species of Trillium, Corydalis, Epilobium, &c., with various orchideous plants, ornament the mountain bases, while the Dracæna borealis, which accompanies us for long distances up their sides, enlivens the greater portion of the year at an earlier season with its flowers of a golden yellow, and at a later with its berries of a celestial blue. The true Rhododendrons, which so greatly adorn the European mountains and those of our middle states, are perhaps less frequent; but their place is supplied in the far north by the beautiful Kalmia glauca, one of the finest species of its genus, while on several of our more elevated peaks, especially upon the Grand Haystack, in New Hampshire, the bold and savage Mt. Bigelow in Maine, and the White Mountains proper, the above-mentioned Arenarias, and more rarely, the Lapland Diapensia, whose brief awakening is succeeded by a long sleep of many months, enliven the very loftiest summits, blossoming among the banks of snow which lie around them, and creating a garden in the clouds, nay, sometimes too much elevated above them to receive nourishment from the raindrops which they scatter.

25 "But passed the pine and birchen grove." In the mountains of the north of Europe, the birch has the highest range, but, as far as the observation of the author has extended, the pines reach a higher altitude in New England, which is rich in the cone-bearing trees.

26 "All new! the very insect race." The limits of the animal are as rigidly defined as those of the vegetable kingdom. Seas and mountain barriers divide races from each other; and this law of parallelism between altitude and latitude seems to include even the insect world. In the highlands of Maine and New Hampshire occurs a Canadian Fauna, and various new species of insects, which did not occur in the lowlands, were there