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delicate fragrance, and a soul for poetry, the linnaea will never cease
to be one of his prime favorites. So I say again, let us have variety.
It would be a stupid town all whose inhabitants should be of identical
tastes and habits, though these were of the very best; and it would be a
tiresome country that brought forth only a single kind of plants.

The flower of Linnaeus is a flower by itself, as here and there appears a
man who seems, as we say, _sui generis_. This familiar phrase, by the
bye, is literally applicable to _Linnaea borealis_, a plant that spreads
over a large part of the northern hemisphere, but everywhere preserves
its own specific character; so that, whether it be found in Greenland or
in Maryland, on the Alaskan Islands or in Utah, in Siberia or on the
mountains of Scotland, it is always and everywhere the same,--a genus of
one species. Diversities of soil and climate make no impression upon its
originality. If it live at all, it must live according to its own plan.

The aster, on the contrary, has a special talent for variation. Like
some individuals of another sort, it is born to adapt itself to
circumstances. Dr. Gray enumerates no less than one hundred and
ninety-six North American species and varieties, many of which shade
into each other with such endless and well-nigh insensible gradations
that even our great special student of the _Compositae_ pronounces the
accurate and final classification of this particular genus a labor
beyond his powers. What shall we say of this habit of variability? Is it
a mark of strength or of weakness? Which is nobler,--to be true to one's
ideal in spite of circumstances, or to conquer circumstances by suiting
one's self to them? Who shall decide? Enough that the twin-flower and
the star-flower each obeys its own law, and in so doing contributes each
its own part toward making this world the place of diversified beauty
which it was foreordained to be.

I spoke of the linnaea's autumnal blossoms, though its normal flowering
time is in June. Even this steady-going, unimpressible citizen of the
world, it appears, has its one bit of freakishness. In these bright,
summery September days, when the trees put on their glory, this lowliest
member of the honeysuckle family feels a stirring within to make itself
beautiful; and being an evergreen (instead of a summer-green), and
therefore incapable of bedecking itself after the maple's manner, it
sends up a few flower-ste