144 NATURAL HISTORY OF THE FARM 
notably of the hazel. The writer well recalls a district school- 
room and a teacher’s desk behind which stood a bunch of 
straight hazel rods. They were always ready. Their use 
once only was figuratively described a a “‘cup of hazel tea,” 
and their continued use, as ‘‘a course in sprouts”. 
A number of our native shrubs produce edible berries, as 
noted in Study 2; such are currants, gooseberries, elder- 
berries, buffalo-berries, nannyberries, blueberries, etc. Hazels 
and filberts produce fine nuts. The best of these edible 
products have been so much improved by selection and care 
that the wild ones are no longer of much importance to us. 
The roots and bark of other shrubs, ninebark, spicebush, 
prickly ash, witch-hazel, etc., are used medicinally. The 
wood of sumach and prickly ash has ornamental uses because 
of the peculiar yellow color. 
But if of no great economic value, these shrubs are very 
interesting to a naturalist. Some of them, like the wild rose 
and the azaleas, have splendid flowers, the flowers of the 
white swamp-azalea being deliciously fragrant; and the great 
clusters of minute flowers on elders, viburnums, spirzeasand 
buttonbush are strikingly handsome. Even in winter, there 
is color in the bushes. The stems of the osier dogwood are of 
a lively red color; those of moosewood and the kerrias are 
light green; and the panicled dogwood gives to any bank it 
overspreads a fine soft purple tint. The persistent fruits of 
such shrubs as snowberry and winterberry add charming 
touches of color to the landscape in winter. The latter is 
especially effective when seen forming a band of scarlet 
around the border of a meadow. 
As with the trees (Study 9), so with the shrubs, winter 
brings the characters of their stems into view. With the fall 
of the leaves, striking differences in the twigs appear. They 
are coarse and remote in sumach and elder and others that 
bear great compound leaves; they are slender and tangled in 
