THE COUNTRY HOME [CHAPTER 
guished by red, white, and pink flowers. The white 
is the least rank grower; and everywhere the pink- 
flowered is the strongest and best for hedge or 
windbreak. ‘The exochorda grandiflora is a rare 
shrub, hard to propagate, but superb for our pur- 
pose. I wish it were vastly more common. The 
sassafras, cut back, is admirable; and the mulberry 
is among the best. Beeches can be cut back and 
made into solid walls, if you choose. The Rivers 
purple-leaved beech naturally is very thick and 
close. 
In all cases it is well to select shrubs and trees 
that will furnish bird food, or bee food, or both. 
You cannot conceive, until seen, the amount of 
food furnished by a single tree of mountain ash. 
A windbreak of this tree would proclaim your resi- 
dence to be a bird paradise. Birds of passage 
seeing it would drop down for a breakfast; and the 
fame of it would go out north and south, until you 
would every year have new varieties of birds — 
singing to you songs of cooperative love. The 
wild cherries are also valuable in the same way. 
The birds eat the red sorts in July, and the black 
ones in August and September. Nor do I see any 
reason why that beautiful bush, the elder — which 
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