One of the keenest pleasures of the railway botanist comes from his enjoyment of the massed color of great quantities of flowers of the same kind. One morning our train was running along through the level Jersey country; it was at that wretched hour of the morning when you have just taken your place in someone else's seat while the porter is getting your own ready, and you have that all-over miserable feeling that comes from a night's ride in a stuffy sleeper. In an instant all discomfort was forgotten in the sight of a wide salt meadow which seemed one mass of the pink swamp-mallows. The gray morning mist was turned silvery white by the rising sun, and giving color to it all were the wide stretches of the flowers. It was all one shimmering mass of misty silvery-gray, sunlight radiance, and rose-color as delicate as that of the lining of some seashells.
Once again, this time on one of our home roads near Pittsburg, I felt the beauty of the color of great masses of flowers. The railway runs along about half-way up the bluffs by the side of the Beaver River; as we rounded a curve, the steep bank above me turned suddenly intensely red with the vivid color of the scarlet campion. Only those who notice most closely have any idea how rare a color in our wild flowers any shade of true red is. Nearly all the flowers that are commonly spoken of as red are in reality purplish pink or reddish lilac. Indeed I know only two wild flowers whose color is a true red. One of these is the cardinal lobelia, whose petals are of the darkest, clearest, most velvety red; and the other flower is the scarlet campion. The color of this latter is true scarlet, and the river bluff that June morning fairly glowed with its bloom. It is Holmes who compares the color of the cardinal flower to that of drops of blood new fallen from a wounded eagle's breast; but any true comparison for the color of this other flower must be founded on life, and on life when it is at its fullest of strength and of enjoyment.
Even the most ardent of car-window botanists will not claim that the only place from which the beauty of the color of flowers in mass can be appreciated is the window of a railway train. To all there come memories of fitful spring days when in long country drives they have seen partly worn-out meadows and barren hillsides turned to the softest blue-gray mist by the delicate color of countless blossoms of houstonia. And as they drove slowly along the partly dried, muddy roads of mid-April the effect of every varying phase of the spring weather on the massed color sank slowly into their consciousness. They had time to notice how blue was the color-mist lying on the sheltered meadows in the sunshine, and how coldly gray it grew as it crept up the hillsides across which the chill spring wind was blowing.