AN OWL’S HEAD HOLIDAY. PAGS | 
one, — alike in botany and in morals, — “ By 
their fruits ye shall know them.” 
What a world within a world the forest is! 
Under the trees were the shrubs, — knee-high 
rock-maples making the ground verdant for 
acres together, or dwarf thickets of yew, now 
bearing green acorn-like berries; while below 
these was a variegated carpet, oxalis and the 
flower of Linnzeus, ferns and club-mosses (the 
glossy Lycopodium lucidulum was especially 
plentiful), to say nothing of the true mosses 
and the lichens. 
Of all these things I should have seen more, 
no doubt, had not my head been so much of 
the time in the tree-tops. For yonder were the 
birds ; and how could I be expected to notice 
what lay at my feet, while I was watching in- 
tently for a glimpse of the warbler that flitted 
from twig to twig amid the foliage of some beech 
or maple, the very lowest branch of which, 
likely enough, was fifty or sixty feet above the 
ground. It was in this way (so I choose to be- 
lieve, at any rate) that I walked four or five 
times directly over the acute-leaved hepatica 
before I finally discovered it, notwithstanding it 
was one of the plants for which I had all the 
while been on the lookout. 
I said that the birds were in the tree-tops; 
but of course there were exceptions. Here and 
