SHEEP LAUREL; LAMBKILL. 



On moist hillsides and in fields we 

 may find patches of the smaller, low- 

 growing laurel, known as SHEEP 

 LAUREL. The individual flowers 

 are fully as pretty or perhaps more 

 beautiful than those of Mountain 

 Laurel as they are of a very bright 

 and particularly handsome shade of 

 pink, but the shrub itself and the 

 flower masses are far inferior to the 

 j^receding in point of beauty. 



Very abundant in mountains from 

 Pennsylvania southwards, but of very 

 local occurrence within our range 

 is the GREAT LAUREL or RHOD- 

 ODENDRON. In its southern haunts 



it grows in almost unbelieveable profusion and to a great 

 height, covering whole mountain sides and being, for a few 

 weeks in June and July, one of the wonders of Nature. The 

 leaves are very similar to those of the Mountain Laurel, but 

 the individual flowers I do not consider as handsome as 

 those of that species. They are five-parted, broadly bell- 

 shaped, white or pinkish and more or less spotted with yel- 

 low or orange. 



Although the nectar of the laurels apparently is not in- 

 jurious to the insects that partake of it, honey made by 

 bees feeding upon it is slightly poisonous and the leaves of 

 all species are quite poisonous to all animals that eat them. 



The famous TRAILING ARBUTUS or MAYFLOWER, 

 which also belongs to this same Heath Family, grows, as 

 nearly everyone knows, on rocky hillsides or in woods, 

 particularly under evergreen trees. Few flowers are as 

 fragrant as are these little pink and white beauties that 

 brave the raw weather of March and April and whose 

 odor is very suggestive of that of the Water Lily. Unfor- 

 tunately, Arbutus is yearly becoming less abundant owing 

 to the great quantities that are gathered and to the fact 

 that the pickers pull the vines up root and all. 



