DECEMBER. 387 



grasses in May. The water-cresses may be seen grow- 

 ing freshly at the bottom of their channels, and the ferns 

 are beautiful among the shelving rocks, through which 

 the waters make their gurgling tour. When the sun, at 

 noonday, penetrates into these green and sheltered re- 

 cesses, before the snow has come upon the earth, when 

 the pines are waving overhead, the laurels clustering with 

 the undergrowth, and the dewberry (evergreen-blackberry) 

 trailing at our feet, we can easily imagine ourselves sur- 

 rounded by the green luxuriance of summer. Nature 

 seems to have prepared these pleasant evergreen retreats, 

 that they might afford to her pious votaries, a shelter 

 during their winter walks, and a prospect to gladden 

 their eyes, when they go out to admire her works, and 

 pay the homage of a humble heart to the great Architect 

 of the universe. 



Nor is the season without its harvest. The bayberry, 

 or false myrtle, in dry places gleams with dense clusters 

 of greenish- white berries, that almost conceal the branches 

 by their profusion; the pale azure berries of the juniper 

 are sparkling brightly in the midst of their sombre ever- 

 green foliage; and the prinos or black-alder bushes, 

 glowing with the brightest scarlet fruit, and resembling 

 at a distance pyramids of flame, are irregularly distrib- 

 uted over the wooded swamps. While the barberries 

 hang in wilted and blackened clusters from their bushes 

 in the uplands, the cranberries in the peat-meadows shine 

 out like glistening rubies, from their masses of delicate 

 and tangled vinery. In the open places of the woods 

 the earth is mantled with the dark glossy green leaves 

 of the gaultheria, half concealing its drooping crimson 

 berries ; and the mitchella, of a more curious habit, each 

 berry being formed by the united germs of two flowers, 

 (twins upon the same stem,) adorns similar places with 

 fairer foliage and brighter fruit. 



