EVERGREENS.— THE HEMLOCK. 
83 
Tuesday, 23d . — The small, yellow butterflies are fluttering 
about. These are much the most numerous of their tribe ; with 
us among the earliest to appear in spring, and the latest to 
retreat before the frosts in autumn. 
Wednesday, 2ith . — Warm and pleasant. The woods may now 
be called in leaf, though the foliage is still a tender green, and 
some of the leaves are not full-sized. The maples, hoAvever, so 
numerous in our woods, have already acquired their deep, rich 
summer verdiu'e. The young shoots have started on the hem- 
locks, each twig being tipped with tender green, a dozen shades 
lighter than the rest of the foliage. These delicate light touches 
are highl}’^ ornamental to the tree, and give it a peculiar beauty half 
through the smnmer, for they take the darker shade very slowly. 
The difference between the greens of the two years’ growth is 
more striking on the hemlock than on any other evergreen re- 
membered, at this moment, either the pine, the balsam, or the 
Norway fir. 
The hemlock spruce is a very common tree in this part of the 
country, and an imposing evergreen, ranking in height with the 
tallest oaks, and ashes, and elms of the forest. They are fre- 
quently met with eighty feet high. The other day, walking in 
the woods, we measured one which had just been felled, and it 
proved a hrmdred and four feet in height, and three feet two 
inches in diameter, without the bark. When young bushes, only 
a few feet high, they are beautiful, especially when tipped with 
the delicate green of the young spring shoots ; their horizontal 
branches often sweeping the ground, look as though they had no 
other object in \dew than to form beautiful shrubbery, very different 
in this respect from the young pines, which have a determined up- 
