144 NATURAL HISTORY OF THE FARM 



notably of the hazel. The writer well recalls a district school- 

 room and a teacher's desk behind which stood a bunch of 

 straight hazel rods. They were always ready. Their use 

 once only was figuratively described a a "cup of hazel tea," 

 and their continued use, as "a course in sprouts". 



A number of our native shrubs produce edible berries, as 

 noted in Study 2; such are currants, gooseberries, elder- 

 berries, buffalo-berries, nannyberries, blueberries, etc. Hazels 

 and filberts produce fine nuts. The best of these edible 

 products have been so much improved by selection and care 

 that the wild ones are no longer of much importance to us. 

 The roots and bark of other shrubs, ninebark, spicebush, 

 prickly ash, witch-hazel, etc., are used medicinally. The 

 wood of sumach and prickly ash has ornamental uses because 

 of the peculiar yellow color. 



But if of no great economic value, these shrubs are very 

 interesting to a naturalist. Some of them, like the wild rose 

 and the azaleas, have splendid flowers, the flowers of the 

 white swamp-azalea being deliciously fragrant ; and the great 

 clusters of minute flowers on elders, viburnums, spiraeas and 

 buttonbush are strikingly handsome. Even in winter, there 

 is color in the bushes. The stems of the osier dogwood are of 

 a lively red color; those of moosewood and the kerrias are 

 light green; and the panicled dogwood gives to any bank it 

 overspreads a fine soft purple tint. The persistent fruits of 

 such shrubs as snowberry and winterberry add charming 

 touches of color to the landscape in winter. The latter is 

 especially effective when seen forming a band of scarlet 

 around the border of a meadow. 



As with the trees (Study 9), so with the shrubs, winter 

 brings the characters of their stems into view. With the fall 

 of the leaves, striking differences in the twigs appear. They 

 are coarse and remote in sumach and elder and others that 

 bear great compound leaves; they are slender and tangled in 



