THE COUNTRY H O iM E [ruAPTFR 



guished by red, white, and pink flowers. The white 

 is the least rank grower ; and everywhere the pink- 

 flowered is the strongest and best for hedge or 

 windbreak. The exochorda grandiflora is a rare 

 shrub, hard to propagate, but superb for our pur- 

 pose. I wish it were vastly more common. The 

 sassafras, cut back, is admirable; and the mulberry 

 is among the best. Beeches can be cut back and 

 made into solid walls, if you choose. The Rivers 

 purple-leaved beech naturally is very thick and 

 close. 



In all cases it is well to select shrubs and trees 

 that will furnish bird food, or bee food, or both. 

 You cannot conceive, until seen, the amount of 

 food furnished by a single tree of mountain ash. 

 A windbreak of this tree would proclaim your resi- 

 dence to be a bird paradise. Birds of passage 

 seeing it would drop down for a breakfast ; and the 

 fame of it would go out north and south, until you 

 would every year have new varieties of birds — 

 singing to you songs of cooperative love. The 

 wild cherries are also valuable in the same way. 

 The birds eat the red sorts in July, and the black 

 ones in August and September. Nor do I see any 

 reason why that beautiful bush, the elder — which 



[116] 



