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THE FLORA OF WINTER. 
P OETS rave about the delights of spring and the glories 
of autumn, and the luxuriant magnificence of summer 
has been extolled by all classes of writers. But who has 
ever talked about the flora of winter? Yet there is noth¬ 
ing so beautiful as a winter landscape. There is a purity 
and a grandeur about it that the summer landscapes lack. 
That sensuousness of sound and color is gone, but the air 
is full of ozone, and the delicate aroma of the Pines and 
Cypress trees is suggestive of the subtle fragrance that 
emanated from the goddess of the Greeks when she came 
from her bath of nectar and ambrosia. Even the slum¬ 
berous whisperings of the needle-laden boughs, or the soft 
pelting of the snow crystals upon the emerald tufted cones, 
have a charm that summer sounds do not possess. It is 
as if Pan was breathing lightly upon his pastoral reeds. 
The flora of winter is as well defined, as suggestive, and 
as beautiful as that of the hot midsummer season. It may 
require a finer sympathy with Nature to appreciate its 
beauties ; they are less glaring and obtrusive, and more in 
the way of suggestion, so to speak, than of pageantry. 
Yet winter is rich in color, and the enchanted foliage is like 
a description from the Arabian Nights. Not only ruby and 
emerald jewels and shining crystals, but living cones and 
leaves of green—the dress of a real sovereign—are borne 
by these trees, the Evergreens, which stand against the 
whiteness just as if they had stepped out of Aladdin’s 
garden. 
It is a poetical fallacy, I think, to associate the winter 
with stillness. Although one has written— 
“ On a lone winter’s evening, when the frost has wrought 
in silence,” 
snow-time is everything but silent to the open ear. It 
fairly rings and sings with unnumbered resonances and 
sibilations, but all so harmonized upon some mystic key¬ 
note like that of the sea-waves, as not to intrude them¬ 
selves upon our senses, and in fact to intensify the quiet. 
One poet has discovered this, and Whittier, in his “ Snow- 
Bound,” more than once refers to the winter sounds: 
“ Within our beds awhile we heard 
The wind that round the gables roared ; 
We heard the loosened clapboards tost, 
The board-nails snapping in the frost; 
Faint and more faint the murmurs grew, 
Till in the summer-land of dreams 
They softened to the sound of streams, 
Low stir of leaves, and dip of oars, 
And lapsing waves on quiet shores.” 
But the Flora of Winter: Have you counted all these 
beautiful evergreen trees that pitch their emerald richness 
against the snowy whiteness or the dreary brown of 
winter ? They constitute a very interesting family. The 
Pine, the Spruce, the Hemlock, the Fir, the Arbor-vitae, 
the Cedar, the Juniper, the Cypress and the Yew. Which 
of these trees could we spare from the landscape ? If we 
call the White Pine the king of our woods, the Hemlock 
should stand for the queen and a group of Balsam Fir 
would answer for the princes. The Cedars and Spruces 
stand as sentinels along the line of hills, guarding the val¬ 
leys—the Cedars solitary watchmen, the Spruces clamber¬ 
ing up in bands, while the Yew and the Arbor-vitse cluster 
with neighborly kindness in our gardens and cemeteries 
and the squares and parks of our cities. 
These trees belong to one of the oldest classes of our 
floras. They formed the landscapes of the old coal pe¬ 
riod. All these black masses of anthracite were once state¬ 
ly Pines and Cedars. They sheltered the huge unwieldy 
lizards, and reflected themselves in the glassy waters 
where the saurians swam and basked in their dreamy 
existence. Legends, sweet and manifold, cluster around 
these trees in the literature of every race. The Juniper 
tree is dear to the children, from the old German story 
of the “ Step-mother and the Juniper tree.” The Yew, so 
celebrated from its churchyard associations, and from its 
being employed in the manufacture of bows—the weapon 
principally used by our warrior ancestors before the intro¬ 
duction of fire-arms—was a sacred tree with the Druids 
and is connected with many of their religious ceremonies. 
The Balsam Fir (Picea balsamea) commands our 
attention in this respect. It is the tree that forms a great 
feature in the German forests, and it reigns especially in 
the famous Black Forest, where all the elves and dwarfs of 
the German stories are to be found. Can you not fancy 
one of the little elves sitting astride a cone-laden bough, 
high in the air, just as the dwarf appeared to the Twin- 
Brothers ? Then there is the Cypress consecrated by the 
ancient Greeks to Venus and Apollo, and dedicated to the 
dead, through the Eastern world from Magonderan to 
Constantinople. 
Ovid gives us the traditionary account of the mournful 
origin of the Cypress tree, and we always find it devoted 
to mournful thoughts, or sad solemnities. Cyprissus, son 
of Telephus of Cea, was beloved by Apollo. Having 
killed the favorite stag of his friend, he grieved, pined, and, 
dying, was changed by Apollo into a Cypress tree. The 
shade and smell were considered dangerous; hence the 
Romans looked on it as a fatal tree, and made use of it at 
funerals. We are told by Irving that, at Latium, on the 
decease of any person, a Cypress was placed before the 
door. Loudon’s lines are familiar to us all: 
“A funeral train 
Will in Cypress grove be found ; ” 
and again, 
“The moon is o'er a grove of Cypress trees 
Weeping like mourners.” 
The stateliest and noblest of the Coniferas is tbe White 
Pine. Like a Greek statue in a luxurious drawing-room, 
sharp cut, cold, virginal; shaming by the grandeur of 
mere form, the voluptuousness of mere color; so stands 
the Pine, a thing to be worshiped rather than to be loved. 
One sees it frequently standing near our villages in the 
