Y&LLOW 



pected till well on in September, when its leaves have fluttered 

 earthward and its fruit has ripened. Does the pleasure which we 

 experience at the spring-like apparition of this leafless yellow- 

 flowered shrub in the autumn woods arise from the same de- 

 praved taste which is gratified by strawberries at Christmas, I 

 wonder? Or is it that in the midst of death we have a fore- 

 taste of life ; a prophecy of the great yearly resurrection which 

 even now we may anticipate ? 



Thoreau's tastes in such directions were certainly not de- 

 praved, and he writes: ''The witch-hazel loves a hill-side with 

 or without woods or shrubs. It is always pleasant to come upon 

 it unexpectedly as you are threading the woods in such places. 

 Methinks I attribute to it some elfish quality apart from its fame. 

 I love to behold its gray speckled stems." Under another date 

 he writes: *' Heard in the night a snapping sound, and the fall 

 of some small body on the floor from time to time. In the 

 morning I found it was produced by the witch-hazel nuts on my 

 desk springing open and casting their seeds quite across my 

 chamber, hard and stony as these nuts were." 



The Indians long ago discovered the value of the bark of the 

 witch-hazel for medicinal purposes, and it is now utilized in many 

 well-known extracts. The forked branches formerly served as 

 divining-rods in the search for water and precious ores. This 

 belief in its mysterious power very possibly arose from its sug- 

 gestive title, which Dr. Prior says should be spelled layck-hazel, 

 as it was called after the wych-elm, whose leaves it resembles, 

 and which was so named because the chests termed in old times 

 * ' wyches ' ' were made of its wood — 



" His hall rofe was full of bacon flytches, 

 The chambre charged was with wyches 

 Full of egges, butter, and chese." * 



* Hazlitt's Early Popular Poetry, 



193 



