The Chorus of the Forest 



to find our way, and struggle to realize our con- 

 dition, we suddenly learn that our sunshine is gone 

 and life is gray monotony. 



The largest open space we found underfoot 

 was on the side of a hill or incline facing east. The 

 trees appeared quite as large and closely set, but Baneberry 

 for some reason the earth was not covered with . and 

 shrubs and bushes, as was the rule. We had found 

 two places where trees had been cut so long ago 

 that the decayed stumps crumbled at a touch, and 

 there was a third not as old. Close beside it I 

 found beauty to gladden the heart of musician, 

 poet, or painter. It began with a white baneberry 

 of marvelous grace. The plant was all of three 

 and a half feet in height, a smooth stem, upright 

 as the trees around it, and, like them, branching. 

 Its finely cut, lacy leaves, beautifully veined and 

 notched, grew in clusters of three. On a single 

 stem, borne high above the leaves, shone a big 

 bunch of china-white berries, three dozen by count ; 

 the stems red, each berry having a purple-black 

 eye-spot. Close by grew a near relative, very sim- 

 ilar except that its berries were red. The flowers 

 of both are a pyramidal cluster made up of a mass 

 of small white blooms. 



Xow just in front of the baneberry grew the 

 most graceful of all ferns, the plumy maidenhair, 

 and because of this wet season it had attained un- 

 usual size for our climate. On wiry two-foot stems 

 87 



