THE DRAPERY OF VINES 3<DI 



stalks mingled with the Elder bushes, now loaded 

 with the translucent, wine -colored berries. 



"Hyacinth Beans," I added, lifting the leaves to 

 find the clusters of thick -petaled, keeled flowers of 

 violet -brown, that yield such an exquisite odor. 

 The vine was fairly heavy with its fragrant burden, 

 but the flower -clusters, being borne in the leaf- 

 axils, are often concealed from the eye, and so first 

 tell the nose of their presence. For a space of 

 at least twenty yards, the bushes of the low ground 

 were bound into a hedge by this vigorous vine, 

 which, although too inconspicuous in itself to be 

 called a landscape flower, pays its tithe in fra- 

 grance, and brings into uniformity much that would 

 otherwise be unsightly, straggling growth. 



This Bean has two cousins, one "pesky," to 

 use Time o' Year's expression, and the other 

 daintily pretty, the Hog Peanut of tangles and 

 woodland underbrush, and the Trailing Wild Bean 

 of sandy road banks. 



The Hog Peanut is so very "pesky" and destruc- 

 tive to delicate ferns and flowers by throwing its 

 octopus-like meshes around them and literally 

 choking them to death, that every lover of the 

 wildwood undergrowth should make a point of up- 

 rooting it wherever possible. It is a plant 'easily 



