266 BOTANY OF THE 
European Chestnut. The fruit is said to be smaller and sweeter in the 
former; but I apprehend the comparison has been made with that of 
the cultivated tree, or marrons of the French. The nuts of the so-called 
wild chestnut of our English woods (to which it is a very dubious na- 
tive) are not larger than in the trans-atlantie variety, if such the latter 
can be termed where no perceptible difference exists. Sassafras, 
S. officinalis, is still pretty frequent and of tolerable dimensions in 
sheltered woods, in the low marshy parts of which the Spice or Fever- 
bush, Benzoin odoriferum, was observed adorned with its fine coral-red 
fruit. The Witch Hasel, Hamamelis virginicas, was a common shrub 
as undergrowth in the woods, and was now laden with the ripe capsules 
of the previous year’s flowers, and which remain hanging till the leaves 
decay and drop, and a fresh succession of blossom bursts into life E 
as vegetation is sinking into the torpor of a long winter's sleep,— 
strange conjunction of youth, maturity, and decrepitude. The English 
and the German name (Zanbernuss) well express this apparently un- 
natural union, as though it were the effect of sorcery upon the plant, 
which, in its mode of growth, colour of the smooth bark, and general 
aspect of the leaves, bears no slight resemblance to the common hase! 
of Europe; nor are the clusters of capsules, at a first glanee, much un- 
like bunches of filberts. The economy of the Witch Hasel, where such 
opposite processes and extreme phases of vegetation are carried on and 
manifested simultaneously, would be a curious and instructive subject 
of inquiry in vegetable physiology. The distribution of this singular 
shrub, which is more worthy of a place in British gardens than it has 
yet been favored with, would seem to incline rather to the north and 
east than to extend in the opposite direction; at least I met with it 
much more abundantly in Upper Canada and the adjoining parts of the 
United States than in the central and southern portions of the Union. 
n one of my rambles in search of plants, with a relative of my own, 
I saw the Leatherwood, Dirca palustris, in considerable plenty in a 
damp bottom or ravine, growing to the height of five or six feet, and 
very much branched. The branches lie spreading and divaricate in a 
horizontal position, so as to form a flat or depressed head ; these, as 
well as the bark, are extremely like those of our Daphne Laureola, 
and are equally tough and flexible. The stems vary from the thickness 
of the finger to that of the wrist, the wood excessively soft, and almost 
as sectile as cork. This shrub is interesting, as being the only repre- 
