142 FOREST TREES OF CALIFORNIA. 



myriads of them cling to the soft velvety leaves of the Ashen 

 Maple for warmth, for solace, and for sleep. Is not their 

 choice marvelous? And to behold them nightly return with 

 the same regularity, for a time, as the pigeon or other wild 

 birds. A jar, or club being thrown, they then fall help- 

 lessly down in showers of thousands, ere the sun revives 

 them to active life again. 



MISS DAVIS'S LEUCOTHOE HEATHER. 



(Leucothoe Davisii.) 



" Oh, happy pleasure ! here to dwell 

 Beside thee in some heathy dell." 



— Wm. Wadsworth. 



A BEAUTIFUL evergreen shrub, three to six feet high, 

 nearly smooth, leaves alternate bright green or only a 

 shade lighter below, thick, oblong, obtuse at both 

 ends, or only the uppermost acutish-pointed, margins mi- 

 nutely toothed, leaf-stem short, blade about two inches long; 

 flowers on long, one-sided racemes, and these in little fas- 

 cicles of two to five or more in number, a terminal cluster 

 adorning the tips of the twigs with an abundance of delicate, 

 white, tubular bells gracefully nodding, all in a row along 

 their respective common flower stems, to which they are 

 articulated by a short thread of their own, bracts and bract- 

 eoles scale-like, etc., etc. Perhaps we may be deemed too 

 particular, but this is seldom urged against a new discovery, 

 much less one so desirable for cultivation. To the hyper- 

 critical and fastidious these flowers might be considered too 

 coquettishly pursed at the mouth, and a little pouting ; but 

 they are fragrant and decidedly pretty. The honey from 

 some flowers of an allied kind brings on intoxication of a 

 formidable phrenic kind of very lengthened duration, and 

 most of their relations have a heady tendency, to say the 

 least; but little is as yet known of this species, and the fruit 

 is altogether unknown. 



Collected by Miss N. J. Davis, of Plumas County, found in 

 the high Sierras, north. 



