Wood Notes 
same family are the alternate-leaved and the poison 
dogwood—oftener shrub than tree—the latter having 
the unenviabie notoriety of being the most virulently 
poisonous growth in our woods; but fortunately it is 
rare. 
* 
The thoughts of the Eternal mind are not all of equal 
moment, any more than are those of finite creatures. 
There is something grander in universal gravitation 
than in the mere chase of ether-waves. Tipping the 
earth’s axis a few degrees out of the plane of its orbit, 
whence instantly comes the entire succession of the sea- 
sons, with all this signifies to the human race—this is a 
more far-reaching thought than the moon’s tides. The 
night sky shows more prodigious thought than any 
flurry of fire-flies; and evolution, rightly understood, 
seems more stupendous than the entire aggregate of nat- 
ure’s works. A little consideration shows that, in vege- 
tation, we have distinct evidence of superior skill in the 
origination of the compound leaf; for this simple de- 
vice secures an immense unrealized variety in foliage- 
effect. The exquisite symmetry of foliage in such trees 
as the ailanthus, locust, mountain-ash, and Kcelreuteria, 
is due to the precision of growth in leaves whose leaf- 
lets are arranged with wellnigh mathematical exactness 
along the common leaf-stem. Now, if these long stems 
were true branches, enduring from year to year, the in- 
juries to which they and their buds would be constantly 
exposed would very soon result in such irregularity of 
leaf-arrangement as would utterly efface the original 
53 
