94 NORTH CAROLINA 



most deliciously rich and fruity, a perfume 

 for the gods. The leaf, too, now that I came 

 really to look at it, was of an elegant shape 

 and texture, untoothed, but with a beautiful 

 " auriculated " base, as Latin-loving bota- 

 nists say, from which the plant derives its 

 vernacular name, — the ear-leaved umbrella- 

 tree. The waxy blossoms seemed to be quite 

 scentless, but I wished that Thoreau, whose 

 nose was as good as his eyes and his ears, 

 could have smelled of the buds. 



The best thing that I found at the pond, 

 however, by long odds the most interesting 

 and unexpected thing that I found anywhere 

 in North Carolina (I speak as a hobbyist), 

 was neither a tree nor a human being, but a 

 bird. I had been loitering along the river- 

 bank just above the pond itself, admiring 

 the magnolias, the silver-bell trees, the lofty 

 hemlocks, — out of the depths of which a 

 " mountain boomer," known to simple North- 

 ern folk as a red squirrel, now and then 

 emitted his saucy chatter, — and the Indi- 

 an's paint-brush (scarlet painted-cup), the 

 brightest and among the most characteristic 

 and memorable of the woodland flowers ; 

 listening to the shouts of an olive-sided fly- 



