138 FLOWERING SHRUBS, 



be seen by breaking the mid-rib across. The thread is as fine and 

 as frail as the delicate web with which some spiders envelop their 

 eggs — too fine to be turned to any use. 



The silken thread is not confined to this species alone, it exists 

 in many other trees and plants. In the nerves of several of the 

 Dogwoods it is seen quite as conspicuously as in C. sericea. 



Panicled or Privet-leaved Cornel. — Cornus pcDiiculata^ (L'Her.) 



This is a very pretty species of Dogwood, found abundantly on 

 the Rice Lake Plains, on the high dry hills between the hamlets of 

 Harwood and Gore's Landing. The bush is not more than four 

 or five feet high, with light branching sprays. The pretty white 

 flowers are borne in convex cymes or sometimes in panicles and are 

 followed by snow-white berries. The foliage is dark-green, often with 

 a purplish-bronze tint ; the leaves are long and narrow ; the nerves, 

 whitish, and the light veining distinctly marked ; the surface of the leaf 

 is very smooth, but hardly shining. This pretty shrub would be well 

 worthy of being introduced into our shrubberies. 



There are many other species of Dogwood which are common to 

 our swamps and thickets, some reaching to the height of small trees? 

 as the Flowering Dogwood, C. florida, which is held in great esteem in 

 the United States, for certain medicinal qualities \ it has been used as 

 a substitute for Peruvian bark in low fevers. The Indians are said to 

 extract a red dye from the roots. The fruit of the Flowering Dogwood is 

 scarlet : the flowers, with their showy creamy-white involucres, three 

 inches across, are very handsome, and are produced abundantly in the 

 month of June. This very handsome shrub grows in Western Canada, 

 where it sometimes becomes a tree and reaches to the height of twenty 

 or thirty feet. A great contrast is this stately species to the dwarf 

 herbaceous creeping plant of our woods, Coriius Caiiadoisis. 



Red-Osier Dociwood. — Cornus siolonifera, (Michx.) 



There are few of the native species of Cornel that are more 

 ornamental than the Red-Osier Dogwood ; the bright, crimson wand- 

 like branches of which, even when stripped of their foliage, are an 

 enduring ornament Their rosy shadows mirrored on the surface of 

 the smooth waters of lake or forest stream, enliven the landscape and 

 delight the eye, when the beauty of the foliage of the surrounding trees 

 and shrubs has been swept away before the autumnal frosts and wintry 

 winds. 



In Spring, and early Summer, the white, fragrant flowers, in crowded 

 flat heads, adorn the low shores. Later in the Fall, the blue berries on 



