OBSERVATIONS UPON THE NEWER BOTANY. 57 



light reach the shrubbery and herbaceous vegetation beneath. There 

 are alders, huckleberries, and their close of kin, the Virginia creeper, 

 running upon the ground and over the smaller trees in the vicinity of 

 a sleepy rivulet bordered by Skunk Cabbage and Jack-in-the-pulpit. 

 Where it is not quite so marshy the ground view of the woods is de- 

 lightfully obscured by a luxuriant growth of the Cinnamon fern, for 

 it is inidsummer. 



To the left is a similar piece of young wood lot, not a primeval 

 forest in either instance, and here the wild grape clings to the young 

 maple, and the Poison Sumac may be lurking in the low land. In 

 front of you, however, lies a strip twenty rods wide, where the wood- 

 man's axe has done its destructive work, and the clumps of small 

 growth you see are the sprouts from the maple and other stumps. 

 This is the second season from the time of clearing. 



Have you the picture before you ? A rectangle of vegetation 

 stretching down to the rivulet that is lost under the direct rays of the 

 summer sun and then on the slope beyond, all framed in by right 

 lines of forests and grateful shadows. If you have located the clear- 

 ing from my brief outline, you are ready to enter in and possess it 

 botanically. If such a piece of land, even though it be but a single 

 acre, is close at hand, you have a treatise on vegetable ecology and 

 physiology that contains no end of treasures. Not that it bears any 

 long list of species, but that it does possess the various conditions 

 that, taken in connection with the border land, are more interesting 

 than books, for it is the living volume, that vitalized cyclopedia of 

 facts and the suggestion of principles, that make plant analysis tame 

 and useless, save as it may help to catch the convenient handle to 

 hold the subject that is undergoing some delightful transformation. 



Let that clearing be your field of study day by day. When the days 

 are long and the heat is intense, -mtiA. with specimens there gathered 

 retreat into the shade of the wood lot on either side. Compare the 

 part of the sun-kissed, and it may be sun-burned shrub with that of its 

 shaded neighbor of the same species. Both were once alike, but the 

 axe of the woodsman has let in the full sun upon the one, with dry- 

 ing effect upon the soil surroundings. One bears, or attempts to bear 

 the burden and heat of the day, while the other is nursed in broken 

 sunshine and moister soil. 



The Osmunda in the sun has its fronds strict and upright, the 

 pinnae uplifted and twisted to lessen the direct exposure. In the 

 shade the habit is that of some other species, with the fronds grace- 

 fully curved outward, and the delicate pinnae so placed as to catch 

 every broken shaft of the sunlight that penetrates the tree-tops. 

 The ferns in the open arc bleached, while those in the shade are dark 

 green ; the former are tough and the latter delicate. 



