108 FOREST TREES OF CALIFORNIA. 



along mountain streams of the interior of. the State, or farther 

 south, they are often tinged with rose or purple, rarely yel- 

 lowish; the whiter forms of the coast north are by far the 

 most impressive beauties known of all the Azalea section. 

 We have seen a brilliant scarlet form (R. Azalea calendulacea) 

 in Alabama, more gay but inferior in queenly grandeur. 

 Associated with these Woodland and Swamp Honeysuckles, 

 the sweet seraphic reechoing numbers of the warbling wood 

 robin, hermit thrush or mavis (Tardus mvsicus) of the 

 East, still roll on in ever reminiscent harmony with the 

 passing years, so the Honeysuckle here, associated with its 

 own little song thrush (Turdus Pallasi, var. nanus), both 

 these odors and those notes, though fainter and feebler, again 

 awake to living reality past affections for the fragrant 

 woods — albeit as celestial echoes from off that other Pacific 

 shore — for nature hath also her sweeter subdued songs for 

 the musive soul; her wind-spirits that sooth with softer 

 wings, or murmuring low, whisper and sigh for serener 

 realms afar. 



The lasting and delightful fragrance of these boughs hung 

 among clothes no moth ever invades, and the plague is 

 staid. 



FRINGE FLOWERED ASH. 



(Fraxinus dipetala.) 



" Through whose broken roof the sky looks in." — Lour/fellow. 



A LTHOUGH the common Oregon Ash has a mellow 

 L\ green, loosely expansive leaf, and open general airy 

 ^~ shade, apparently flowerless, so inconspicuous are 

 they, yet the white Fringe Flowering Ash of California has 

 a much lighter colored and smaller leafleted plumy spray, 

 more impassive foliage, and an altogether more open and 

 airy top, through which the cheerful sunbeams play upon 

 the lawn in flickered light — the shadow of a shade. When 

 in blossom, the leaves are more mobile, and the twigs graced 

 with a wonderful wealth of white line-like petals pending in 

 effusive pannieles of fringe, which renders it most strikingly 

 beautiful. The tree is much smaller, say twenty to thirty 

 feet high, eight to ten inches in diameter. Smooth in leaf 

 and twig, the feathered leaf two to four pairs and an odd 

 one, or five to nine leaflets, rarely three, and these an inch or 

 two long, oval or slightly oblong, margins saw-toothed, at 

 length leathery ; on very short leaf-stemlets, panicles of 



