214 A BUNCH OF HERBS. 



one that was so. Some seasons the sugar-maple 

 yields much sweeter sap than at others ; and even in 

 dividual trees, owing to the soil, moisture, etc., where 

 they stand, show a great difference in this respect. 

 The same is doubtless true of the sweet-scented flow- 

 ers. I had always supposed that our Canada violet 

 the tall, leafy-stemmed white violet of our North- 

 ern woods was odorless, till a correspondent called 

 my attention to the contrary fact. On examination, 

 I found that while the first ones that bloomed about 

 May 25th had very sweet-scented foliage, especially 

 when crushed in the hand, the flowers were practi- 

 cally without fragrance. But as the season advanced 

 the fragrance developed, till a single flower had a 

 well-marked perfume, and a handful of them was 

 sweet indeed. A single specimen, plucked about 

 August 1st, was quite as fragrant as the English vio- 

 let, though the perfume is not what is known as 

 violet, but, like that of the hepatica, comes nearer 

 to the odor of certain fruit-trees. 



It is only for a brief period that the blossoms of 

 our sugar-maple are sweet - scented ; the perfume 

 seems to become stale after a few days ; but pass un 

 der this tree just at the right moment, say at night- 

 fall on the first or second day of its perfect inflores- 

 cence, and the air is loaded with its sweetness ; its 

 perfumed breath falls upon you as its cool shadow 

 does a few weeks later. 



After the Linnaea and the arbutus, the pretties* 

 iweet-scented flowering-vine our woods hold is the 



