30 A SHARP LOOKOUT. 



refused on the instant the hive-honey which I hap- 

 pened to have with me, and which I offered them. 

 I had had this flower under observation more than 

 twenty years, and had never before seen it visited by 

 honey-bees. The same season I saw them for the first 

 time working upon the flower of blood-root and of ad- 

 der's-tongue. Hence I would not undertake to say 

 again what flowers bees do not work upon. Virgil 

 implies that they work upon the violet, and for aught 

 I know they may. I have seen them very busy on 

 the blossoms of the white oak, though this is not con- 

 sidered a honey or pollen-yielding tree. From the 

 smooth sumac they reap a harvest in mid-summer, 

 and in March they get a good grist of pollen from 

 the skunk-cabbage. 



I presume, however, it would be safe to say that 

 there is a species of smilax with an unsavory name 

 that the bee does not visit, herbacea. The produc- 

 tion of this plant is a curious freak of nature. I find 

 it growing along the fences where one would look for 

 wild roses, or the sweet-brier ; its recurving or climb- 

 ing stem, its glossy, deep-green, heart-shaped leaves, 

 its clustering umbels of small greenish-yellow flowers, 

 making it very pleasing to the eye ; but to examine it 

 closely one must positively hold his nose. It would 

 be too cruel a joke to offer it to any person not ac- 

 quainted with it to smell. It is like the vent of a 

 charnel-house. It is first cousin to the trilliums, 

 among the prettiest of our native wild flowers, and 

 the same bad blood crops out in the purple trillium or 

 birthroot. 



