EXPLOEATOEY NOTICES FOE NOVEMBEE. 535 



As the tempest of every night now makes continual 

 progress in clearing of its frondage any hesitating tree 

 that had been permitted thus long to retain it, the 

 landscape assumes new features in many directions, 

 and often, indeed, discloses beauties to the eye, unob- 

 served or unexpected while the cloak of summer 

 leaves spread so thickly over the country. How often 

 at this period have I been struck with the picturesque 

 aspect of the old timbered farm-house of the true 

 hospitable old English times, with its peaked gables, 

 and wide, lofty, turret-like chimnies, now fully obvious 

 among the leafless orchards around it, and often ac- 

 companied by its sober, unvarying companion, the 

 battered but enduring Yew, recalling a thousand 

 recollections of old times and then, along side of 

 them extend, frequently, those abbey-like barns, whose 

 timbered ribs and lofty doors are all thickly encrusted 

 with the sacred cryptogamic crust of centuries, like 

 emblazoned letters in time-worn volumes. There is, 

 alas, no beauty in the modern brick barns, and but few 

 plants to be obtained from them, 



The denuded trees now exhibit palpable signs of 

 the approaching season in the Mistletoe, with its white 

 berries prominently nestled in many of them, and the 

 trees on which this curious parasite occurs, may at 

 this period be more advantageously observed than at 

 any other time. A stroll among the mossy labyrinths 

 of the wood may conclude the explorations of the 

 year. Here all is silent and mournful, the ground 

 thickly covered with a soft yielding carpet of accumu- 

 lated leaves, while the tall trunks of the forest trees 

 wave with a thick crop of Evernia prunastri and the 

 ramaline, and other frondose and filamentous lichens, 



