A BUNCH OF HERBS 



first ones that bloomed about May 25 had very 

 sweet-scented foliage, especially when crushed in 

 the hand, the flowers were practically without fra- 

 grance. But as the season advanced the fragrance 

 developed, till a single flower had a well-marked 

 perfume, and a handful of them was sweet indeed. 

 A single specimen, plucked about August 1, was 

 quite as fragrant as the English violet, though the 

 perfume is not what is known as violet, but, like 

 that of the hepatica, comes nearer to the odor of 

 certain fruit trees. 



It is only for a brief period that the blossoms of 

 our sugar maple are sweet-scented ; the perfume 

 seems to become stale after a few days : but pass 

 under this tree just at the right moment, say at 

 nightfall on the first or second day of its perfect 

 inflorescence, and the air is laden with its sweet- 

 ness ; its perfumed breath falls upon you as its cool 

 shadow does a few weeks later. 



A^3r the linnsea and the arbutus, the prettiest 

 sweet-scented flowering vine our woods hold is the 

 common mitchella vine, called squaw-berry and par- 

 tridge-berry. It blooms in June, and its twin flowers, 

 light cream-color, velvety, tubular, exhale a most 

 agreeable fragrance. 



Our flora is much more rich in orchios than the 



European, and many of ours are fragrant. The 



first to bloom in the spring is the showy orchis, 



though it is far less showy than several others. I 



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