On “ The Point ”—Second Excursion 
yet requiring something more positive than mere shrubs. 
The thorns that grow freely on the branches, though 
long, are no disfigurement, the tree’s form is comely, 
the leaf bright and healthy and clearly individualized 
in the several species, the luxuriant bloom is one of the 
attractions even of the month of flowers, and, as summer 
wanes, the prodigal clusters of scarlet berries begin to 
show themselves, gleaming through the russet autumn 
leaves, a shower of ruddy drops against a winter’s sky, 
rivalling the mountain-ash and holly. The whole an- 
nual career of a thorn-tree is a case of patient continu- 
ance in well-doing, and it does not lose its reward in the 
world’s wide approbation. 
The middle of ‘‘ The Point’’ becomes, early in June, 
a broad sheet of white, which shows to best advantage 
from the boat-house and the grand stairway of the Ter- 
race, for here in one solid group are twenty-three cock- 
spur thorns, one more, to make a round two dozen, 
standing off by itself. But the paragon of thorns is the 
red-flowered variety of the English hawthorn, which is 
superb enough to warrant my giving its name in all its 
pretentious fulness—Crategus oxyacantha flore plena 
rosea. Among all the beauties scattered so profusely 
throughout the Park, four will always recur to my mind 
as perfectly unique—the gorgeous full bloom of the 
yulan in the last of April, the pink-robed double-flow- 
ered English hawthorn in June, the weeping willows 
in early spring, and in fall the exquisite tamarix, that 
marvel of green mist low-lying on the ground, the most 
vaporous exhalation of verdure to be seen in northern 
latitudes. 
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