38 OUTDOOR STUDIES 
the successive epochs of heat which led the 
wandering flowers along the Arctic lands, and 
of cold which isolated them once more. Yet 
doubtless these humble movements of our local 
plants may be laying up results as important, 
and may hereafter supply evidence of earth’s 
changes upon some smaller scale. 
May expands to its prime of beauty; the 
summer birds come with the fruit blossoms, the 
gardens are deluged with bloom, and the air 
with melody, while in the woods the timid 
spring flowers fold themselves away in silence 
and give place to a brighter splendor. On the 
margin of some quiet swamp a myriad of bare 
twigs seem suddenly overspread with purple 
butterflies, and we know that the Rhodora is 
in bloom. Wordsworth never immortalized a 
flower more surely than Emerson this, and it 
needs no weaker words; there is nothing else 
in which the change from nakedness to beauty 
is so sudden, and when you bring home the 
great mass of blossoms they appear all ready 
to flutter away again from your hands and leave 
you disenchanted. 
At the same time the beautiful Cornel-tree is 
in perfection ; startling as a tree of the tropics, 
it flaunts its great flowers high up among the 
forest-branches, intermingling its long, slender 
twigs with theirs, and garnishing them with 
