A Window in Arcady 
vivid scarlet color and are rather palatable in their mellow 
old age, being mealy and with a slightly sweet taste. 
Perhaps the finest of our smilaxes is the laurel-leaved 
which is found in the swamps of the pine barrens and 
southward along the coast. A beautiful evergreen vine, 
with elliptical, rather unctuous leaves, smooth and plea¬ 
sant to the touch as Russia leather, it loves to climb by 
its abundant tendrils far up into the trees, where the 
graceful ends hang down like curls for Boreas when in 
playful mood to run his fingers through. It bears an 
abundance of berries in spherical bunches, which require 
the sun of two seasons to ripen them, and those which we 
now find on the vines are accordingly green and imma¬ 
ture—infants exposed remorselessly to the winter’s worst. 
One grows very fond of this sturdy, cheery vine and when 
passing a thicket where it grows likes always to step in 
and stroke its glossy leafage as one strokes a favorite cat. 
Along fence rows and in thickets a pretty sight is offered 
by the vines of the round-leaved smilax or greenbriar. 
Its stout green stems, destitute of leaves at this season and 
armed with strong, wicked thorns, form impenetrable 
tangles which are attractive now with bunches of plump 
black berries swinging by slender stalks. The stems of 
this vine are curious in that, instead of being: round, they 
are frequently quadrangular—a most unusual shape for a 
plant stem. More attractive is the glaucous wild smilax, 
whose stems are slenderer than those of the greenbriar, 
and are covered with a delicate, frosty bloom, which, when 
removed by the finger, discloses a purplish ground beau¬ 
tifully mottled in green. Some of the leaves of this plant 
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