Ascending one of the mountain ridges that line the canon on both sides, we find on the very top in dry black waxy soil, a beautiful herbaceous perennial with dark green leaves, scabrous or rough to the touch. It has scarlet flowers, and the large bracts which clothe the entire upper part of the stem and accompany the flowers, are even of a more intense scarlet than the flowers. I suppose you would be very eager to secure a plant with roots, and attempt to pull up one of them. You will be disappointed, for the shoots of the plant break at the bottom like glass, if roughly bent. This gives you a lesson. But soon we discover another beautiful specimen of this plant. Taking now a pick or some other instrument, we carefully remove the soil around the plant, and find that it has a few long, thin, yellow, thread-like roots, very much like yellow silk thread. Now you have secured the plant, but you are not yet in port, for most likely on your way home the shoots will break off from the plant by the jolting of the wagon, and the mere roots if planted will refuse to send up new shoots.

All I know or can make out of this plant is that it is a Castilleia, order Scrophulariae. I guess this from its resemblance of Castilleia pallida, and if the Editor could guess from the description its name, he is politely asked to insert it here. Several years ago I read in the Gardeners' Monthly about a partial root parasite from California, also a Castilleia, and it may be this is the same plant, for when digging up a plant there was always a thick root of some other shrub found at some distance under the surface, and the roots of this Castilleia seemed to feed on this root. A beautiful shrubby Pentstemon comes next. Pentstemon baccharifolia grows not over one foot high, evergreen little shrub with serrate or crenate leaves, and spikes of coral red flowers with some white. But is not there a fern growing on the very top of the mountain in the most ordinary dry dirt and little rocky fragments, exposed the whole day to the full glare of the sun? It is indeed a fern; the circinate vernation of the leaves betray it. It appears as if the dust of a whole year had accumulated on its fronds, but it is not dust, and on examination we find that the whole plant is woolly underneath and on the stem; the upper surface of leaves is of a beautiful glaucous green.

It is Notholaena albida and is about 6 inches high.

A small Agave covers whole acres of land, probably Agave Virginica, its leaves on the south side all lifted up and bent over to the north, by the action of the south winds, which blow here in spring and summer. This is the compass plant, of which newspapers sometimes bring sensational articles.

For a descent down into the valley we select a somewhat steeper part of the mountain, as it is much easier to come down in such places than climb up. Nearly 100 feet below the summit of the mountain there crops out a very solid and thick bed of limestone, sloping sharply down, and in places nearly perpendicular, facing north-east; here is a wealth of ferns. Where the rocks are not too steep, there has accumulated a sort of peat from the dead ferns of past ages, and from the upper part of the rock bed, the rain water, stored up in the looser ground above, oozes out and keeps the peat below more or less moist. A still more beautiful fern than the last named grows here. Notholaena sinuata, also covered with downy pubescens on stem and underside of fronds, of a golden bronze color, the fronds leathery and thick, of a peculiar green on upper side, evergreen and a foot high. The next is Cheilanthes argyrea, like frosted silver underneath; also evergreen. Cheilanthes viscosa has its nearly three-cornered frond finely cut as if it were moss. Climbing down the mountain side we find under the shade of some trees a creeping fern, with a leaf like a pecan leaf, bearing on its rhachis a flower stem, or rather a spore stem.

But we will leave the ferns and turn our attention again to-trees. In the dry river bed grows everywhere the beautiful Chilopsis linearis, Bignoniaceae. A tall tree with spikes of purple and white large flowers during summer, and leaves like a willow; therefore called Willow Catalpa.

On our homeward way we will stop at the little town of San Marcos, 30 miles from Austin, where the river of the same name takes its start. Besides Nelumbium luteum, which is very abundant, our attention is arrested by a kind of sunflower growing in the water. It stands on the sides of the river where the flow of the water is not too swift. It is an upright plant with its roots in the mud or sand, opposite leaves, with lateral branches at nearly every joint above the water; from the stem and also perchance the branches under water, shoot out roots which hang in the water. The plant is about 4 feet above the water and full of large yellow sunflower-like blossoms, though more beautiful than sunflowers are, and the disk of the flower not so large, and if the Editor could guess from this description the botanical name, he would much oblige the writer by inserting it here.

Having finally come back to our starting point, I will introduce a few more plants which have not been mentioned yet by me. Baptisia leucantha is a beautiful herbaceous perennial plant, occasionally found in the surroundings of Austin, in sandy soil, with long pendulous racemes of pale yellow lupin-like flowers in April. In the same soil grow also two fine climbers of the Leguminosae family - Clitoria Mariana, sub-climbing, and Lentrosema Virginiana, the latter with long tapering spindle-shaped roots; both have large lilac colored flowers, with a white spot on the vexillum or standard, i. e., the upper leaf of the irregular corolla. But in these two plants the flowers have assumed somewhat the habit of orchids. The flower when opening, from the greater weight of the standard probably, turns around and has the standard on its under side.

And now the writer of this talk about flowers and plants thanks the indulgent reader of the Gardeners' Monthly for the kind attention given to him, hoping that he soon may read in this magazine something about the flowers of other states. Austin, Texas.