102 STUDIES IN THE FIELD AND FOREST. 



of nature, or discovers some forgotten charm that used 

 to hover about certain old familiar scenes, or that was 

 connected with some once familiar object, to whose 

 pleasing influence he had become blunted, but which is 

 now revived in all its former intensity, by witnessing its 

 effects on the susceptible minds of the young. Not 

 long after the first of the month many amentaceous 

 shrubs are -covered with their flowing drapery of blos- 

 soms. Along the borders of the old stonewalls, and 

 outside of the woods, the hazel groves display some of 

 the earliest flowers of the year. Their light green 

 aments, before the leaves have started from their 

 hybernacles, hang like fringe from their numerous 

 branches ; and attracted by their odors the honey bees 

 and other early insects have already commenced their 

 mellifluous operations among their flowery racemes. 

 While the hazel thus adorns the edges of the woods 

 and the rustic way-sides, the hills are covered with 

 sweet fern bushes, whose flowers diffuse a spicy odor 

 that never dies out from their foliage. 



We are not obliged to go far from our door steps to 

 see the evidences of reviving vegetation. The elms are 

 fully embroidered with blossoms of a bright chocolate 

 hue ; and on account of the graceful droop of their 

 branches, the flowers seem to have a pendulous charac- 

 ter, resembling long tassels of fringe, whose sobriety of 

 hue corresponds with the general sombre tints of the 

 landscape. The red maple, arrayed in a more brilliant 

 vesture, and in the ruddy hues of a summer evening 

 cloud, when rising up among the still leafless trees of 

 the forest, seems to illuminate its shady recesses, like a 

 ])yre of crimson flame. The willows bearing blossoms 

 either yellow or of a silvery whiteness, occasioned by 

 the down that covers their aments, add a difl'erent kind 



