ted other small fields; and here for a moment we
were agreeably surprised at beholding a tiny cloud of butterflies, so
abundant in the warm sunshine and presenting such transparency of
color, as to suggest the idea that some rainbow had been shattered
and was floating in myriad particles on the buoyant air. The
short-lived summer perhaps makes flowers all the more prized and the
more carefully tended. In the rudest quarters a few pet plants were
seen, whose arrangement and nurture showed womanly care and
tenderness. Every window in the humble dwellings had its living
screen of drooping many-colored fuchsias, geraniums, forget-me-nots,
and monthly roses. The ivy is especially prized here, and is
picturesquely trained to hang gracefully about the architraves of the
windows. The fragrant sweet-pea, with its combined snow-white and
peach-blossom hues, was often mingled prettily with the dark green of
the ivy, the climbing propensities of each making them fitting
companions. In one or two windows was seen the brilliant flowering
bignonia (Trumpet-vine), and an abundance of soft green, rose-scented
geraniums. Surely there must be an innate sense of refinement among
the people of these frost-imbued regions, whatever their seeming,
when they are actuated by such delicate appreciations. "They are
useless rubbish," said a complaining husband to his hard-working
wife, referring to her little store of flowers. "Useless!" replied
the true woman, "how dare you be wiser than God?"

Vegetation within the Arctic Circle is possessed of an individual
vitality which seems to be independent of atmospheric influence.
Plants seem to have thawed a little space about them before the
snow quite disappeared, and to have peeped forth from their
frost-surrounded bed in the full vigor of life, while the grass
springs up so suddenly that its growth must have been well started
under cover of the snow. One of the most interesting subjects of
study to the traveller on the journey northward is to mark his
progress by the products of the forest. The trees will prove, if
intelligently observed, as definite in regard to fixing his position
as an astronomical observation could do. From the region of the date
and the palm we come to that of the fig and the olive, thence to the
orange, the almond, and the myrtle. Succeeding these we find the
walnut, the poplar, and the lime; and again there comes the region of
the elm, the oak, and the sycamore. These will be