There are ten or twelve species of grasses of every variety, from close, curly, compact mats to tall stalks—tussocks of the wild wheat, _Elymus arenaria_, standing in favorable seasons waist high—the “wheat of the north”—together with over one hundred varieties of annuals, perennials, sphagnum, cryptogamic plants, etc., all flourishing in their respective positions, and covering nearly every point of rock, tufa, cement, and sand that a plant can grow upon, with a living coat of the greenest of all greens—for there is not sunlight enough there to ripen any perceptible tinge of ochre-yellow into it—so green that it gives a deep blue tint to gray noonday shadows, contrasting pleasantly with the varying russets, reds, lemon-yellows, and grays of the lichen-covered rocks, and the brownish-purple of the wild wheat on the sand-dune tracts in autumn, together, also, with innumerable blue, yellow, pink, and white phænogamous blossoms, everywhere interspersed over the grassy uplands and sandy flats. Occasionally, on looking into the thickest masses of verdure, our common wild violet will be found, while the phloxes are especially bright and brilliant here. The flowers of one species of gentian, _Gentiana verna_ are very marked in their beauty; also those of a nasturtium, and a creeping pea-vine on the sand-dunes. The blossom of a species of the pulse family is the only one here that emits a positive, rich perfume; the others are more suggestive of that quality than expressive. The most striking plant in all of a long list is the _Archangelica officinalis_, with its tall seed-stalks and broad leaves, which grows first in spring and keeps green latest in the fall. The luxuriant rhubarb-like stems of this umbellifer, after they have made their rapid growth in June, are eagerly sought for by the natives, who pull them and crunch them between their teeth with all the relish that we experience in eating celery. The exhibition of ferns at Kamminista, St. Paul, during the summer of 1872, surpassed anything that I ever saw: I recall with vivid detail the exceedingly fine display made by these luxuriant and waving fronds, as they reared themselves above the rough interstices of that rocky ridge. From the fern roots, and those of the gentian, the natives here draw their entire stock of vegetable medicines. This floral display on St. Paul is very much more extensive and conspicuous than that on St. George, owing to the absence of any noteworthy extent of warm sand-dune country on the latter island.