How quickly one imbibes disdain for all unrighteous restraint. No wonder the inhabitants dwelling among the Swiss Alps could not bear the crushing yoke of tyranny thrust upon them. The very atmosphere they breathed had in it an elixir, and the lofty, snow-clad hills, as they gazed upon their seeming unchangeableness, were only loftier principles that led their souls in trial flights heavenward. As you look out again at this vast wilderness of mountains towering together you are aware how many and superb are the views you never could have enjoyed by remaining in the valleys below. Only by continued effort can one leave the lowlands of self, and it requires a courageous soul indeed not to look back as did Lot's wife at the smoking ruins of her village. How much of indomitable courage and firmness is taught by those hills! How much of humility by the little blue campanula peeping from rocky ledges, with heaven's own blue "gladdening the rough mountain-side like a happy life that toils and faints not." We do not know why the Florida range in the Hoosacs was so named unless it was on account of the wonderfully luxuriant ferns that present an almost tropical appearance along its sides. Here are vast meadows of Osmundas, waving their plume-like fronds of rich green in tropical beauty. These are the most luxurious plants our low wet woods or mountain meadows know. They are all superb plants whose tall, sterile fronds curve gracefully outward, forming vase-like clusters with their resplendent shields. The regal fern belonging to this family is all that its name implies. It has smooth pale green sterile fronds, with a crown that encircles the fertile, flower-like fronds, forming a vase- like cluster of singular beauty. This fern was one time used by herbalists to prepare a salve for wounds and bruises. We thought that it would be harder to destroy such beauty than to bear the wounds and bruises. It has in it the very essence and spirit of the woods, and "as you approach and raise these fronds you feel their mysterious presence." Here, too, you meet with the interrupted fern, whose graceful, sterile fronds fall away in every direction, holding you captive with its charm. It is fair enough to interrupt Satan himself. An old English legend relates that near Loch Tyne dwelt an Englishman, Osmund, who saved his wife and child from imminent danger by hiding them upon an island among masses of flowered fern, and the child in later years named the plant for her father. Wordsworth was familiar with these ferns, for he writes: