FEBRUARY. 95 



that their branches seem to be hung with dark purple fruit : 

 and the sweet fern of the upland pastures, in still mild 

 weather, often faintly perfumes the atmosphere with the scent 

 of its half developed leaves and flowers. 



Nor is the season without its harvest. The sweet gale, or 

 false myrtle, in dry places gleams with dense clusters of green- 

 ish white berries, that almost conceal the branches by their 

 profusion : the pale azure berries of the juniper are sparkling 

 brightly in the midst of their sombre evergreen foliage ; and 

 the black-alder trees, glowing with the brightest scarlet fruit, 

 and resembling at a distance pyramids of flame, are irregular- 

 ly distributed over the wooded swamps. While the barber- 

 ries hang in wilted and blackened clusters from their bushes 

 in the uplands, the cranberries in the peat meadows shine 

 out like glistening rubies from their masses of delicate and 

 tangled vinery. In the open places of the woods the earth 

 is mantled with the dark glossy green leaves of the gualthcria, 

 half concealing its drooping crimson berries ; and the Mitch- 

 ella of a more curious habit, each berry being formed by the 

 united germs of two flowers, twins upon the same stem, 

 adorns similar places with fairer foliage and brighter fruit. 



There is a sort of perpetual spring in these protected arbors 

 and recesses, where we may at all times behold the springing 

 herbs and sprouting shrubbery, when they are not hidden 

 under the snow drift. The American hare feeds upon the fol- 

 iage of these tender herbs, when she exposes herself at this 

 season to the aim of the gunner. She cannot so well provide 

 for her winter wants as the squirrel, whose food, contained in 

 a husk or a nutshell, may be abundantly hoarded in her sub- 

 teranean granaries. The hare in her garment of fur. pro- 

 tected from the cold, feels no fear of the climate : and man 

 is almost the only enemy who threatens her, when she comes 

 out timidly to browse upon the scant leaves of the white 

 clover, or the heath-like foliage of the hypericum. 



But the charm of a winter's walk is derived chiefly from 

 the flowerless plants — the ferns and lichens of the rocks, the 

 mosses of the dells and meres, and the trailing wintergreens of 

 the shrubby pastures. Many species of these plants seem to 



