THE THEE IN WINTER 
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When autumn has turned the verdancy of the forest into discolored 
hues, and the roaring gales have shaken off the last withered leaf, 
“ And woods, fields, gardens, orchards, all around 
The desolated prospe3t thrills the soul, 1 ’ 
even then nature is not dead, she sleeps only. The new life lies hidden in 
the hud, horn early in summer from the axil of the leaf. 
It is our own fault, if in the hare forest we see only a crowd of wooden 
trunks and limbs and twigs. There is in winter an abundance of objects to 
be studied by the naturalist. The book of nature lies open at every season 
to the attentive eye. 
To recognue the different trees in winter is not only amusing to the 
friend of nature, but in many cases of great practical use. To expose the 
characters by which the species of our woody plants can be distinguished in 
winter, is the aim of this paper. As the space allowed is not sufficient for 
a synoptical description of each single species, — matter enough to fill a 
book, — the reader cannot expect more, in these few lines, than an intro- 
duction to the subject, and may accept this as an invitation to inform him- 
self by autopsy and study, assisted by the most necessary drawings. 
Everybody will easily recognize, even at a distance, an old oak tree by 
its stout stem, its strong cro.oked divaricate limbs ; or an elm by its dome- 
like appearance, caused by its numerous twigs dividing from a number of 
primary limbs of equal strength ; or a Gymnocladus by its slender stem 
with but few branches and comparatively thick twigs. In some trees the 
bark is characteristic : that of the hackberry is very rough with narrow 
elevated ridges, while that of the beach and hornbeam is quite even and 
smooth. The bark of the shell-bark hickory separates the outer layers 
in long flaps, while in the mockernut and bitternut it is compact, and often 
nearly smooth ; sometimes the bark of the stem is rough and that of the 
limbs smooth, as in the red oak ; the bark of the twigs is often corky- 
ridged ( Quercas macrocarpa ), or separates in small flaps ( Quercus bicolor ), 
or bears two opposite corky ridges ( Ulmus alata ). In many trees the ridges 
anastomose obliquely, leaving lozenge-shaped spaces. The white color 
of the bark of the canoe birch is very characteristic. The whole di- 
vision of white oaks differs from that of the black oaks by the color of 
the bark, which is paler in the former and darker in the latter. We have 
no surer guide than the characters taken from the arrangement, form and 
construction of the buds and, in many cases, the form of the leaf-scars. 
