WOOD NOTES 
‘* Nature here 
Wanton’d as in her prime, and play’d at will 
Her virgin fancies.” 
—MILTON. 
T is not when nature is in full flush of life, and the 
botanist does not find the long midsummer days long 
enough for the innumerable species springing into 
bloom on every hand, that the landscape shows those 
quickly varying effects that sweep like summer clouds 
in silent swiftness over hill and dale, and change the 
scene from day to day, almost from hour to hour. 
Spring and fall show nature’s flow and ebb, each day 
another wave in the advancing or retreating tide. A 
single night gives new complexion to the mountain- 
steeps, awakening new patches of delicious green in 
spring, or kindling new flames of maple foliage in fall. 
It is the dawning life and the expiring breath in nature’s 
annual career that furnish the most interesting vistas for 
the painter. With all their sombre majesty and eternal 
calm, what a wilderness of dull monotony a world of 
evergreens would be! How endless the verdure-tints 
of the new-blown buds in April and May, what a de- 
licious softness of atmosphere overspreads them all, in 
contrast with the deeper and more rugged tones of later 
months. In the first gushing vernal days, when the 
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