SNOW STORIES 51 



of the prometheus moth. The leaf had been folded 

 together, lined with spun silk, and lashed so strongly 

 that the twig would break before the silken cable. 



We passed through a clump of staghorn sumac 

 with branches like antlers, bearing at their ends 

 heavy masses of fruit-clusters made up of hundreds 

 of dark, velvety crimson berries, each containing a 

 brown seed. The pulp of these berries is intensely 

 sour, its flavor giving the sumac its other name of 

 "vinegar plant." These red clusters crushed in 

 sweetened water make a very good imitation of the 

 red circus-lemonade of our childhood. The staghorn 

 is not to be confounded with its treacherous sister, 

 the poison sumac, with her corpse-colored berries. 

 She is a vitriol-thrower, and with her death-pale bark 

 and arsenic-green leaves, always makes me think of 

 one of those haggard, horrible women of the Terror. 



It was in Fern Valley that the Botanist made his 

 discovery for the day. It was only a tree, and more- 

 over a tree that he must have passed many times 

 before. Only to-day, however, did it catch his eye. 

 The bark was that of an oak, but the leaves, which 

 clung thick and brown to the limb, were long, with a 

 straight edge something like the leaves of the willow- 

 oak, only broader and larger. It was no other than 

 the laurel-oak, a tree which by all rights belonged 

 hundreds of miles to the south of us. 



He walked gloatingly around his discovery, and 

 it was some time before I could drag him on. There- 

 after he gave me a masterly discourse, some forty 

 minutes in duration, on the life-history of the oaks, 



