A GLANCE WITHIN 



THE CANADIAN FOREST. 



" Not such thou wert of yore, ere yet the axe 

 Had smitten the old woods, their hoary trunks 

 Of Oak and Plane, and Maple o'er thee held 

 A mighty canopy." — Cullen Bryant. 



" A glorious sight, if glory dwell below 

 Where heaven's magnificence makes all the show. ' 



LTHOUGH the snow lingers longer within the forest than 

 , on the open, cleared lands to which the sun and winds have 

 niore ready access, yet vegetation makes more rapid advances, 

 when once the Spring commences, within the shelter of the trees. 



No chilling, biting, winds or searching frosts penetrate the woods, — 

 to nip the early buds of leaf and flower as on the exposed clearings. 

 Within the forest all is quiet and warmth, when without, the air is cold 

 and the wind blustering. It is among the low bushes and young saplings 

 that the first tints of early Spring verdure are seen ; under the kindly 

 nursing of the shrubbery we find the first Spring flowers and succulent 

 plants. The hungry cattle seem instinctively to know that it is in the 

 forest they will find food suited to their wants ; leaving the dry fodder 

 that has been their support through the long winter months, we see 

 them hastening to the woods, however deep and miry the way, to browse 

 on the tender, swelling buds of the Sugar-Maple and Basswood, or 

 searching for the oily blades of the Wild Garlic. 



Let us go to the forest as soon as the snow has disappeared from 

 the leaf-carpeted ground ; we shall see the seedlings of many plants 

 springing up from among the decaying leaves at our feet. 



That prostrate plant, with slender stem and pointed leaves arranged 

 so prettily in whorls of fives or sixes, is Galium triflorum, sweet-scented 

 like our English Woodrufl"; and that bright-green, cheerful looking herb, 

 that spreads in creeping mats over the dead leaves, is the pale-flowered 

 Veronica officinalis. There are Winter-greens— the Pyrolas, of several 



