280 
RURAL HOURS. 
gardens in flocks, feasting upon the ripe seeds ; at this moment, 
they have a little chatty note, which is very pleasant, though 
scarcely musical ; hut as they all seem to he talking at once, they 
make a cheerful murmur about the thickets and fields. 
Monday, Ath . — Many of the maple leaves are now covered with 
brilliant crimson patches, wdiich are quite ornamental ; these are 
not the autumnal change in the color of the leaf itself, for that 
) . 
has not yet commenced, but little raised patches of crimson, 
* , 
which are quite common upon the foliage of our maples in Au- 
gust and September. Many persons suppose these to be the 
eggs of some insect ; but they are, I believe, a tiny parasitic veg- 
etable, of the fungus tribe, like that frequently seen on the bar- 
berry, which is of a bright orange color. The insects who lay 
their eggs in leaves, pierce the cuticle of the leaf, which distends 
and swells over the young insect within ; but the tiny parasitic 
plants alluded to are not covered by the substance of the leaf, 
they rise above it, and are quite distinct from it. Those on the 
maple are the most brilliant of any in our woods. 
The leaves of the wych-hazel are frequently covered with large 
conical excrescences, which are doubtless the cradle of some in- 
sect ; over these, the cuticle of the leaf itself rises, until it grows 
to a sharp-pointed extremity. Some leaves show a dozen of these 
excrescences, and few bushes of the wych-hazel are entirely free 
from them. Occasionally, one finds a good-sized shrub where 
almost every leaf has been turned to account in this way, the 
whole foliage bristling with them. Indeed, there is no other tree 
or bush in our woods so much resorted to by insects for this pur- 
pose as the wych-havel ; all the excrescences hear the same form, 
so that they probably belong to the same insect, which must be 
