bark of the black birch is glossy and bright, but give me the beauty of the white birch's coat. How like a shaft of ivory it gleams in the daylight woods—how the flame of moonlight kindles it into columned pearl!
Did you ever, while wandering in the forest about the first of June, have your eyes dazzled at a distance with what you supposed to be a tree laden with snow? It was the dogwood. Glittering in its white blossoms, each one spread over a broad leaf of the brightest verdure, pointed gauze upon emerald, there stands the pretty tree like a bride. The shadbush and cherry have dropped their white honors a month before, but the dogwood keeps company with the basswood and locust in brightening the last days of spring with its floral beauty. Up in the soft blue it lifts its wreathed crown, for it gathers its richest glow of blossom at its head, and makes the forest bright as with silver chandeliers.
While admiring the dogwood, an odor of exquisite sweetness may salute you; and if at all conversant in tree-knowledge you will know the censer dispensing this fragrance. But you will have to travel some distance, and you will do it as the hound tracks the deer, by scent, for the perfume fills the forest long before the tree catches the eye. At length you see it—the basswood—clustered with yellow blossoms, golden bells pouring out such strong, delicious fragrance, you realize the idea of Shelley:
Which flung from its bells a sweet peal anew
Of music so delicate, soft, and intense,
It was felt like an odor within the sense."
And the deep hum, too, about it—an atmosphere of sound—the festival of the bees surrounding the chalices so rich with honey.
I have mentioned the flowers of the locust and chestnut in conjunction with the basswood. Delicate pearl does the former hang out amid the vivid green of its beautiful leaves, and sweet is that pearl as the lips of the maiden you love.
And the chestnut—scattered thickly among its long, dark-green leaves are strings of pale gold blossoms—haunts also of the revelling
