STUDIES OF PLANT LIFE 
are sufficient, and may be removed when the milk has boiled. 
This flavoring is harmless and pleasant and easily obtained. 
The Choke-cherry never reaches to the dignity of a tree, 
like the Wild Black and Wild Red Cherry of the woods, 
but forms a pretty flowery shrub of straggling growth. It 
blossoms in June and ripens the fruit in August. In respect 
of both flower and fruit it is very ornamental, and may be 
introduced with advantage to the shrubbery—but so tempt- 
ing are the ripe berries to the smaller fruit-loving birds that 
it is soon stripped of its rich crimson load of pendent fruit. 
The cedar or cherry-birds are sure to find out the bush and 
visit it in flocks till they strip it entirely, leaving the ground 
below strewed with the berries that have been shaken off; 
possibly the ground-squirrels and field-mice thus come in for 
a share of the spoils. 
PrickLy ASH—Xanthoxzylum Americanum (Mill). 
This is a handsome shrub with glossy pinnate leaves, the 
valuable qualities of which are hardly sufficiently known 
and appreciated by those who know it only for its orna- 
mental appearance, when the crimson cases that envelop the 
black shining seeds appear in clusters between the bright 
green leaves. The leaflets are in five pairs, with one ter- 
minal, from an inch to two inches in length, serrated at the 
edges, pointed, of a lively bright green, very glossy on the 
surface; the stem and branches straight, covered with whit- 
ish-gray bark; the branches set with stout woody prickles, 
which also extend along the mid-rib on the underside of the 
leaves. The flowers are yellowish-green, in close set clusters, 
appearing before the leaves. The fruit is a round hard’ shin- 
ing bead-like berry, on a little thready stalk, two in each pod, 
at first a bronzed green, deepening to deep crimson when ripe, 
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