70 Blossomed Boughs 



the year, in which the reviving forces of nature were 

 seen in their fullest tide of increase. 



A little later than the hawthorn, the wild dog- 

 rose begins to poise on its arching briars those 

 blossoms which mark the very climax of the year. 

 Of roses, and of their kindred brambles, there are 

 innumerable species and varieties known to science ; 

 but there are two main types of wild roses, common 

 in English hedgerows and thornbeds, of which one 

 is tinged with an even more delicate pink than that 

 of the apple-blossom, and the other is white. The 

 pink dog-rose is in most places the more abundant of 

 the two, and is far the most attractive and truly rose- 

 like. The white, or trailing, rose is comparatively 

 dull and opaque in colour ; and it is usually a scent- 

 less rose, and therefore hardly a rose at all. It can 

 be distinguished even in midwinter by its flexible and 

 slender stems, its much smaller and rounder hips, 

 and its comparative thornlessness ; for the adage 

 that there is no rose without a thorn seems true in 

 intensive degree, and the rosiest of the two common 

 roses is armed with tiger-like talons which are un- 

 known to the more degenerate kind. After the pink 

 rose fades, the white one and the huge clan of 

 brambles alone carry on the succession of pure white 

 or delicately pink- tinged bloom. The last common 

 flowering shrubs of the year are the elder and the 

 wayside dogwood, both of which bear blossoms 

 tinged with yellow or yellowish green. Before the 

 heavy-scented discs of elder-bloom have faded, they 

 shine through the July dusk over empty hay- 

 meadows from which the grass, and the flowers of 



