In Mid-May 89 



colours of exceeding tenderness. The oaks, with 

 their long patience and prospect, are in no hurry 

 about leafing, as the shorter-lived deciduans are. 

 The scrub oak is now one of the most attractive 

 ornaments of the plain lands, and one resents the 

 name, for while the husbandman may find this 

 oak a scrub, it should be called rather the shrub, 

 or the bush oak, for such is its manner of growth. 

 It is delightful to find a member of the majestic 

 family of the oaks condescending to lesser stature 

 and common fellowship with the wayside willows, 

 the hazels, the alders and the sumachs. In truth, 

 it is only our false notions of importance which 

 make such distinctions ; in Nature all are of equal 

 character and rank. 



The season of appearance which we call spring 

 has been so cautious, considerate and dilatory that 

 still there lingers on shaded slopes beneath the 

 pines the arbutus ; still the hepatica flower of 

 April is in bloom in the woodland; and the 

 skunk cabbage, though now swelling those great 

 green leaves which give it its proper name, has 

 not yet done with the hooded blossoms of the 

 earliest spring. Now are the anemones in bloom, 

 and the first of our lilies, the adder-tongue, is 

 making splendid many a knoll in pasture and 

 meadow. This is one of the flowers that gets 

 civilized out of our parks, as the skunk cabbage 



