HOW SPRING COMES 45 
in the higher mountains, is the highly prized galcix, 
whose silky round leaves, green in summer, and rich 
wine-red in winter and spring, have taken the fancy 
of the city florist, sometimes to the discomfiture of 
the collector, who gets large orders for wine-red 
leaves in the summer from haughty florists who can- 
not be induced to believe that red galax leaves, like 
red currants, have their season. One can have no 
idea what a really charming thing the galax is until 
one sees it thickly carpeting the woods. And what 
one never discovers, from seeing it in the stiff circles 
with which it surrounds the city nosegay, is that in 
the early summer it sends up all over the forest 
floor dainty white flower spikes. It, too, has its 
mystery and its romance, for who can doubt, learn- 
ing that it is classed as a monotypic genus of eastern 
North America, that it has its kinsfolk across the 
earth, beckoning us to recognize the relationship 
between the races we look upon as our antipodes? 
Huckleberries soon begin to blossom, but prettier 
than the flowers are the little bright red leaves that 
add so much to the color of the forest floor in early 
spring. And there is the sparkleberry, whose pale- 
green, neat-looking bushes are all a-dangle with 
little snow-white bells crowded as close as can be on 
their slender, swinging stems, precursors of the pale- 
green berries that make a great show because there 
are so many of them. The people sometimes make 
jelly of these berries, amazing jelly as bitter as gall. 
Important and beautiful as are all these flowers 
and budding leaves, the woods do not quite belong to 
