As the time for renewing my subscription to a valued paper comes at this Christmas time, I feel like sending thanks for pleasures received and many good wishes for a "Happy Christmas and a prosperous New Year" to those concerned in its publication. I regret Mrs. W. (page 309) did not meet with my success in hunting wild flowers among the Berkshire Hills as we must both have been looking within a few miles of old Everett.

Though the growth of Lobelia cardinalis is, I believe, limited, and I did not find it, yet it came by hand of a friend into my room, glowing in the depth of its magnificent red, equal to any I ever saw. The large blue Lobelia, too, abounded; golden rods were brilliant and glorious, of many kinds, including rigida and squarrosa. Harebells, of sweetest blue; Potentilla tridentata kept stray flowers for me while its leaves were tinged with autumn red; several of the Orchid family, including a tiny green one, and the pretty purple fringed Orchis. Never were daisies prettier nor Rudbec-kia more glowing; and the asters were at home in their beauty. The curious beaked hazel-nut was there as well as the largest leaves and most thrifty growth I ever saw of the Arbutus. Out of bloom, of course, were the Trillium, Actaea and Clintonia, but their berries gave us "The red, white and blue," while the trailing runners of Tiarella crept over the mossy banks, loving neighbors to the deep-green Coptis leaves, and shaded with our native Yew with its exquisite touches of crimson color.

The sun-light coming through the trees fell softly on patches, fifty feet in diameter, of dwarf Cornel, a perfect wealth of green and red, and now and then a belated white blossom late in August. Nearly a dozen of the daintiest, tiny blue violets gave themselves to my keeping from the softest and greenest of meadow grass, showing that Spring extended loving greeting towards the Autumn, while the witch-hazel shook out a few golden petals by way of good-bye, on my last woodland walk, the first week in September. In one spot, bedded in deepest sphagnum, were creeping plants of our native Calla, pitcher-plants of curious veining, the two cranberries, tiny Chiogenes, little Utricularias, Drosera rotundifolia, longifolia (perched on its caudex) - all neighbors to the fragrant Balsam Fir. The grass of Parnassus was in my hand for the first time; so, too, with the lovely bear-berries carpeting the rocks; while, to crown all, that shy beauty, the Fringed Gentian, followed me from the hills, and, when released from its tin traveling box and placed in the sunshine, opened its " eyes of blue " with their belonging fringes.

These are some of the plants that ministered to my delight in that beautiful " hill country," and I thought perhaps they might interest you - perhaps even recall a happy ramble over the same locality.