MAY. 59 



wander over the village outskirts, will rest upon hundreds 

 of young children, on a sunny afternoon, who have left 

 their active sports to gather them and weave them into 

 garlands, or use them as talismans with which they have 

 associated many interesting conceits. Soon after this 

 the fields appear in the fulness of their glory. Wild 

 geraniums in the borders of the woods and copses, white 

 and yellow violets, ginsengs, bell worts, silverweeds, and 

 cinquefoils bring up the rear in the procession of May. 

 During all this time the flowers of the houstonia, which 

 have been very aptly chosen as the symbols of innocence, 

 beginning in the latter part of April with a few scanty 

 blossoms, grow every day more and more abundant, until 

 their myriads resemble a thin but interminable wreath 

 of snowflakes, distributed over the hills and pastures. 



If we now look upon the forest, we shall observe a 

 manifest connection between the tints of the half-devel- 

 oped spring foliage and those observed in the decline of 

 the year. The leaves of nearly all the trees and shrubs 

 that are brightly colored in autumn present a similar 

 variety of tints in their plaited foliage in May. It is 

 these different tendencies of all the various species that 

 afford the woods their principal charm during this month. 

 It seems, indeed, to be the design of nature to foreshow, 

 in the infancy of the leaves, some of those habits that 

 mark both their maturity and their decline, by giving 

 them a faint shade of the colors that distinguish them in 

 the autumn. 



Though we cannot find in May those brilliant colors 

 among the leaves of the forest-trees which are the crown- 

 ing glory of autumn, yet the present month is more abun- 

 dant in contrasts than any other period, and these increase 

 in beauty and variety until about the first of June. In 

 early May, set apart from the general nakedness of the 

 woods, may be seen here and there a clump or a row of 



