SNOW STORIES 51 
of the prometheus moth. The leaf had been folded 
together, lined with spun silk, and lashed so strongly 
that the twig would break before the silken cable. 
We passed through a clump of staghorn sumac 
with branches like antlers, bearing at their ends 
heavy masses of fruit-clusters made up of hundreds 
of dark, velvety crimson berries, each containing a 
brown seed. The pulp of these berries is intensely 
sour, its flavor giving the sumac its other name of 
‘“‘vinegar plant.” These red clusters crushed in 
sweetened water make a very good imitation of the 
red circus-lemonade of our childhood. The staghorn 
is not to be confounded with its treacherous sister, 
the poison sumac, with her corpse-colored_ berries. 
She is a vitriol-thrower, and with her death-pale bark 
and arsenic-green leaves, always makes me think of 
one of those haggard, horrible women of the Terror. 
It was in Fern Valley that the Botanist made his 
discovery for the day. It was only a tree, and more- 
over a tree that he must have passed many times 
before. Only to-day, however, did it catch his eye. 
The bark was that of an oak, but the leaves, which 
clung thick and brown to the limb, were long, with a 
straight edge something like the leaves of the willow- 
oak, only broader and larger. It was no other than 
the laurel-oak, a tree which by all rights belonged 
hundreds of miles to the south of us. 
He walked gloatingly around his discovery, and 
it was some time before I could drag him on. There- 
after he gave me a masterly discourse, some forty 
minutes in duration, on the life-history of the oaks, 
