A WIND-STOKM IN THE FORESTS 255 



quickly recognized, though mingled with the scents 

 of a thousand land-flowers. As an illustration of 

 this, I may tell here that I breathed sea-air on 

 the Firth of Forth, in Scotland, while a boy; 

 then was taken to Wisconsin, where I remained 

 nineteen years ; then, without in all this time hav 

 ing breathed one breath of the sea, I -walked 

 quietly, alone, from the middle of the Mississippi 

 Valley to the Gulf of Mexico, on a botanical excur 

 sion, and while in Florida, far from the coast, my 

 attention wholly bent on the splendid tropical 

 vegetation about me, I suddenly recognized a sea- 

 breeze, as it came sifting through the palmettos 

 and blooming vine-tangles, which at once awak 

 ened and set free a thousand dormant associations, 

 and made me a boy again in Scotland, as if all the 

 intervening years had been annihilated. 



Most people like to look at mountain rivers, and 

 bear them in mind; but few care to look at the 

 winds, though far more beautiful and sublime, and 

 though they become at times about as visible as 

 flowing water. When the north winds in winter 

 are making upward sweeps over the curving sum 

 mits of the High Sierra, the fact is sometimes pub 

 lished with flying snow-banners a mile long. Those 

 portions of the winds thus embodied can scarce be 

 wholly invisible, even to the darkest imagination. 

 And when we look around over an agitated forest, 

 we may see something of the wind that stirs it, by 

 its effects upon the trees. Yonder it descends in a 

 rush of water-like ripples, and sweeps over the 

 bending pines from hill to hill. Nearer, we see 

 detached plumes and leaves, now speeding by on 



