X FAMILIAR TREES AND THEIR LEAVES. 



hundred trees. This is not so very many for one to 

 become acquainted with, and it is at least a service- 

 able introduction to the life of the woods. 



The stillness of the vast forest, broken only by 

 the silvery, organ -pipe notes of the hermit thrush, is 

 something so strangely opposite to the city's whirl and 

 confusion, that we think of the wilderness as without 

 life ; but in reality it is all life : the trees and their 

 countless leaves live in a world about wliich we know 

 little — we with our lives hemmed in by walls of stone. 

 But when the summer comes, then the stifling air and 

 the hot pavements force the truth upon us — they are 

 dead ! and, exhausted with the city's heat, we echo the 

 wish of the poet Whittier : 



Bring us the airs of hills and forests, 

 The sweet aroma of birch and pine ; 



Give us a waft of the north wind laden 

 With sweetbrier odors and breath of kine. 



F. Schuyler Mathews. 



El Fureidis, Blair, Campton, N. H., 

 May, 1896. 



