UNITED STATES. 267 
sentative in the United States of the natural order Thymeleacez. The 
aborigines, it is said, made the bark into cordage, for which its extreme 
tenacity admirably fits it. A worthy friend in Charleston, S.C., re- 
lated to me, that in a conversation he once had with a surviving actor 
in the war of independence, the latter assured him, that towards the 
close of that event (when, previous to the final evacuation of the country 
by the British, Carolina was a prey to the last fierce struggles for as- 
cendency between the Whig and Tory or American and royalist factions, 
and a relentless partizan warfare was carrying on throughout the States), 
the bark of the Leatherwood supplied a too ready and fitting instru- 
ment of vengeance in the summary executions which usually followed 
defeat on either side, during their sanguinary and lawless conflicts 
amid the swamps and forests of the interior. Nor did my friend's in- 
formant hesitate to avow himself a particeps criminis in having assisted 
to “string up " certain unfortunate adherents of the party opposed to 
his own, who fell into his hands, with this very primitive kind of 
l 
Pine woods seem wanting to the neighbourhood of Hamilton; but 
when the deciduous woods are felled, the Weymouth Pine, P. Strobus, 
springs up in the cleared places abundantly. This and the Hemlock, 
P. Canadensis, appear to be the only indigenous pines hereabouts. At 
Binkley’s Corner, where the Dundas and Ancaster roads uni 
gathered Staphylea trifolia and Clematis virginiana ; the latter, which 
is the representative of our C. Vitalba, besides having ternate leaves 
and diccious flowers, is a more delicate or less woody and robust 
species, though otherwise much resembling it ; nor does it grow in such 
overwhelming masses as our Travellers' Joy, but mostly as single plants 
over the trees and bushes. The Elder, Sambucus nigra, var. Canadensis 
(S. Canadensis, L.) abounds here as in most parts of America, but ap- 
pears to me to differ in no one essential particular from the European 
kind. It is commonly of humbler stature, and the leaflets are usually 
more numerous (six or eight pairs instead of five), and narrower or 
more lanceolate; but the same form and number are sometimes found 
in our English Elder, and in all that regards the flowers and fruit I 
can find no appreciable difference between them. The stem in both is 
equally woody, though commonly described in books as only half 
shrubby in S. Canadensis ; yet this character is not noticed in others. 
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