no WAN 143 



for bird-catchers iti Germany and elsewhere abroad to trap 

 redwings, field-fares, thrushes, and other birds in hair nooses 

 baited with rowan berries. 



The rowan is extremely hardy, and will flourish in almost 

 any soil. It is really a wild mountaineer, delighting to 

 grow on the rocky heights, and forming, either in leaf or 

 in fruit, a charming contrast with the solemn pines, its 

 companions. It is in our own minds irrevocably associated 

 with the grandest mountain scenery, and we have seen it 

 sometimes such a mass of berries that the trees have told 

 as scarlet spots in the landscape. Yet this same rowan, 

 flourishing two thousand feet and more above sea-level, is 

 content to beautify the suburban garden, and give an added 

 grace even to villadom, though we need scarcely say that 

 those who have only seen it amidst such surroundings have 

 but a faint idea of what a rowan is really like. 



The pinnate leaves are of a rather dark green colour, 

 and are built up of a terminal leaflet and from five to nine 

 pairs of laterals. The flowers are in numerous large clusters 

 at the ends of the branches and consequently very con- 

 spicuous, so that in May the tree is a mass of white 

 blossom. The individual flowers are small, and five- 

 petalled, very hawthorn-like in character, very numerous 

 in each cluster, and having an odour that we might perhaps 

 describe as fragrant if we took the precaution of suggesting 

 a note of interrogation after our verdict. Some persons 

 will declare it delightful, while others, we have noticed, 

 are not prepared to allow it to be much more than peculiar. 

 There is great difference of opinion, one cannot help 

 observing, on the question of floral scents — the meadow- 

 sweet, for instance, to some persons amply justifies its 



