31 October 1853 – 6 November 1853

7 a. M. — By river to Nawshawtuct. Owing to the rain of the 28th, added to that of the 23d, the river has risen now probably more than three feet above where it was a week ago, yet wider over the meadows. Just at the edge, where it is mixed with grass and leaves, it is stiffened slightly this morn- ing. On the hill, I see flocks of robins, flitting from tree to tree and peeping. Itis a clear, cool, November- ish morning, reminding me of those peculiarly pleasant mornings in winter when there is a slight vapor in the atmosphere. The same without snow or ice. There is a fine vapor, twice as high as a house, over the flooded meadows, through which I see the whiter dense smoke columns or streaks from the chimneys of the village, a cheerful scene. Methinks I see, far away toward the woods, a frozen mist (?) suspended against their sides. What was that very heavy or thick, though not very large, hawk that sailed away from a hickory? The hemlock seeds are apparently ready to drop from their cones. ‘The cones are mostly open. Now appears to be the very time for walnuts. I knock down showers with a stick, but all do not come out of the shells. I believe I have not bathed since Cattle-Show. It has been rather too cold, and I have had a cold withal. P. M. — By boat with Sophia to my grapes laid down in front of Fair Haven. It is a beautiful, warm and calm ae afternoon. ‘The river is so high over the meadows, and the pads and other low weeds so deeply buried, and the water is so smooth and glassy withal, that I am reminded of a calm April day during the freshets. The coarse withered grass, and the willows, and but- ton-bushes with their myriad balls, and whatever else stands on the brink, are reflected with wonderful distinctness. This shore, thus seen from the boat, is like the ornamented frame of a mirror. The button- balls, etc., are more distinct in the reflection, if I re- member, because they have there for background the reflected sky, but the actual ones are seen against the russet meadow. I even see houses a mile off, dis- tinctly reflected in the meadow flood. The cocks crow in barn-yards as if with new lustiness. They seem to appreciate the day. The river is three feet and more above the summer level. I see many pickerel dart away, as I push my boat over the meadows. They lie up there now, and fishing is over, except spearing. You can no longer stand on the true banks to fish, and the fish are too widely dispersed over the grassy- bottomed and shallow meadow. The flood and wind have washed up great quantities of cranberries loosened by the rake, which now line the shore, mixed with the wrecked grass and weeds. We gathered five quarts, partly frost-bitten. There are already myriads of snow-fleas on the water next the shore, and on the cran- berries we pick in the wreck, as if they were peppered. When we ripple the surface, the undulating light is reflected from the waves upon the bank and bushes and withered grass. Is not this already November, when the yellow and scarlet tints are gone from the forest ? It is very pleasant to float along over the smooth meadow, where every weed and each stem of coarse grass that rises above the surface has another, answer- ing to it and even more distinct, in the water beneath, making a rhyme to it, so that the most irregular form appears regular. A few scattered dry and clean (very light straw-colored) grasses are so cheap and simple a beauty thus reflected. I see this especially on Pot- ter’s meadow. The bright hips of the meadow rose, which we brush against with our boat, — for with sallows and button-bushes it forms islands, — are handsomer thus seen than a closer inspection proves. Tansy lingers still by Hubbard’s Bridge. But me- thinks the flowers are disappearing earlier this season than last. I slowly discover that this is a gossamer day. I first see the fine lines stretching from one weed or grass stem or rush to another, sometimes seven or eight feet distant, horizontally and only four or five inches above the water. When I look further, I find that they are everywhere and on everything, sometimes forming conspicuous fine white gossamer webs on the heads of grasses, or suggesting an Indian bat. They are so abundant that they seem to have been suddenly produced in the at- mosphere by some chemistry, — spun out of air, —— I know not for what purpose. I remember that in Kirby and Spence it is not allowed that the spider can walk on the water to carry his web across from rush to rush, but here I see myriads of spiders on the water, making some kind of progress, and one at least with a line attached to him. ‘True they do not appear to walk well, but they stand up high and dry on the tips of their toes, and are blown along quite fast. They are of various sizes and colors, though mostly a greenish-brown or else black; some very small. ‘These gossamer lines are not visible unless between you and the sun. We pass some black willows, now of course quite leafless, and when they are between us and the sun they are so completely covered with these fine cobwebs or lines, mainly parallel to one another, that they make one solid woof, a misty woof, against the sun. They are not drawn taut, but curved downward in the mid- dle, like the rigging of vessels, — the ropes which stretch from mast to mast, — as if the fleets of a thousand Lil- liputian nations were collected one behind another under bare poles. But when we have floated a few feet fur- ther, and thrown the willow out of the sun’s range, not a thread can be seen on it. I landed and walked up and down the causeway and found it the same there, the gossamer reaching across the causeway, though not necessarily supported on the other side. They streamed southward with the slight zephyr. As if the year were weaving her shroud out of light. It seemed only necessary that the insect have a point d’appuz; and then, wherever you stood and brought the leeward side of its resting-place be- tween you and the sun, this magic appeared. 'They were streaming in like manner southward from the railing of the bridge, parallel waving threads of light, producing a sort of flashing in the air. You saw five or six feet in length from one position, but when. I moved one side I saw as much more, and found that a great many, at least, reached quite across the bridge from side to side, though it was mere accident whether they caught there,— though they were continually broken by unconscious travellers. Most, indeed, were slanted slightly upward, rising about one foot in going four, and, in like manner, they were streaming from the south rail over the water, I know not how far. And there were the spiders on the rail that produced them, similar to those on the water. Fifteen rods off, up the road, beyond the bridge, they looked like a shimmering in the air in the bare tree-tops, the finest, thinnest gossamer veil to the sun, a dim wall. | I am at a loss to say what purpose they serve, and am inclined to think that they are to some extent attached to objects as they float through the atmos- phere; for I noticed, before I had gone far, that my grape-vines in a basket in the boat had got similar lines stretching from one twig to another, a foot or two, having undoubtedly caught them as we paddled along. It might well be an electric phenomenon. The air appeared crowded with them. It was a wonder they did not get into the mouth and nostrils, or that we did not feel them on our faces, or continually going and coming amid them did not whiten our clothes more. And yet one with his back to the sun, walking the other way, would observe nothing of all this. Only stand so as to bring the south side of any tree, bush, fence, or other object between you and the sun. Methinks it is only on these very finest days late in autumn that this phenomenon is seen, as if that fine vapor of the morning were spun into these webs. According to Kirby and Spence, “in Germany these flights of gossamer appear so constantly in autumn that they are there metaphorically called ‘ Der fliegender Sommer’ (the flying or departing summer). What can possess these spiders thus to run all at once to every the least elevation, and let off this wonderful stream? Harris tells me he does not know what it means. Sophia thought that thus at last they emptied themselves and wound up, or, I suggested, unwound, themselves, — cast off their mortal coil. It looks like a mere frolic spending and wasting of themselves, of their vigor, now that there is no further use for it, their prey, perchance, being killed or banished by the frost.

6.30 a. Ms— To Hubbard’s Bridge to see the gossamer. As I go up the back road (the sun rises about this hour), I am struck with [the] general stillness as far as birds are concerned. There is now no loud, cheer- ful effervescing with song as in the spring. Most are gone. I only hear some crows toward the woods. The road and ruts are all frosted and stiff, and the grass and clover leaves. At Swamp Bridge, I see crystals of ice six feet long, like very narrow and sharp spears, or like great window-sashes without glass between them, floating on the water. I see yarrow, autumnal dandelion, and I suppose that is turnip so freshly in flower in Hubbard’s field. Now that the sun is fairly risen, I see and hear a flock of larks in Wheeler’s meadow on left of the Corner road, singing exactly as in spring and twittering also, but rather faintly or sup- pressedly, as if their throats had grown up or their courage were less. The white birch seeds begin to fall and leave the core bare. I now hear a robin, and see and hear some noisy and restless jays, and a song spar- row chips faintly; and here on the willows is a little warbler (?), with a narrow, sharp bill and a forked tail, uttering a dry chip from time to time, and, I suspect, picking up those little spiders which I saw yesterday, which spin this gossamer. The gossamer does not show well against this sun. There is none now streaming from the bridge or across the causeway after this frosty night; only that which was firmly fastened and comparatively short remains still on the trees and bushes. The railing is covered with frost, and I see no spiders out. Plainly the best hour to observe this phenomenon is mid-afternoon or later, when the spiders are full of activity and the sun is in the most favorable position. But yesterday, on the willows, it was a woof, without warp, of the finest conceivable texture, as it were made to strain the air and light, — catch all the grossness of the dechning year and leave us the clear, strained November air, — fall-strained. I saw no insects caught in it. As if every prominence in every twig were con- nected with corresponding ones in every other by a fine line, entangling the rays of light, really catching and reflecting the light alone for all prey that I could see. Or is it a despairing effort? Now that the air is so cool and clear and free of insects, what possesses these little creatures to toil and spin so? Thus Nature gathers up her trail, and finely concludes. One six feet long, and invisible but in one position, in that was seen to stream or wave and flap a foot up and down while the light flashed along it, like a ribbon blown by the wind. You could even take hold of the end ' and hold it still. And the number of them was beyond conception. No industry is vain, and this must have a reason. It must be a perfect day that allows of so fine a display. Any rain or a high wind and, I suspect, whatever makes a disagreeable day, would hinder it. As I return, I notice crows flying southwesterly in a very long straggling flock, of which I see probably nei- therend. A small flock of red-wings singing as in spring. P. M. — Went after pink azaleas and walnuts by — boat. Saw three of those birds (of which I saw one first on the 30th October) on the water’s edge on the meadow, like the telltale. They must be either sandpipers, tell- tales (not the greater or lesser), or plovers (?). Or may they be the turnstone? They went off each time with a chuckling, not whistling, note. A rise of the river like this brings us new birds at once, apparently from the seaside. This locality is somewhat peculiar in this respect, that when our broad meadows are flooded, several new species of birds are added to our ordinary list. They are not so large as the other tattler T see, nor as a woodcock, quite. It is a pleasant day but breezy, and now I can hardly detect any gossamer left on the willows. This wind, perchance, shaking the willows and the reeds, — shak- ing and bending their masts, — strains and breaks this fine cordage, and, moreover, the spiders cannot well walk on the surface of the water now. So, it would seem, it must not only be a perfectly fair Indian-summer day, but quite calm and the water smooth, to permit of this wonderful display, and, perchance, after one of those remarkable and memorable mornings when the air is peculiarly clear and resonant and that white vapor as of frost-steam hangs over the earth, — after a clear, cool, calm Indian-summer morning in Novem- ber. And must it not always follow the fall of the leaf, when there is least motion to the twigs? The short time in which it must be produced, and for which it endures, is remarkable. As I paddle under the Leaning Hemlocks, the breeze rustles the boughs, and showers of their fresh winged seeds come wafted down to the water and are carried round and onward in the great eddy there. Gathered five or six quarts of walnuts, — pignuts, —partly by clubbing the trees, thinking they might fur- nish entertainment some evening the coming winter. Not more than half are out of the shells, but it is plea- sant shelling them to have one’s fingers scented with their fine aroma. The red squirrel reproves the while. It is not true, as I noticed to-day, that squirrels never gnaw an imperfect and worthless nut. Many years ago I came here nutting with some boys who came to school to me; one of them climbed daringly to the top of a tall walnut to shake. He had got the nick- name of Buster for similar exploits, so that some thought he was christened so. It was a true Indian name, earned for once. A striped squirrel out yet. While getting the azaleas, I notice the shad-bush conspicuously leafing out. Those long, nar- row, pointed buds, prepared for next spring, have anticipated their time. I noticed some- thing similar when surveying the Hunt wood- lot last winter. Remember in this connection that at one period last spring this bud appeared the most forward. About three weeks ago my indignation was roused by hearing that one of my townsmen, notorious for meanness, was endeavoring to get and keep a pre- mium of four dollars which a poor Irish laborer whom he hired had gained by fifteen minutes’ spading at our Agricultural Fair. To-night a free colored woman is lodging at our house, whose errand to the North is to get money to buy her husband, who is a slave to one Moore in Norfolk, Virginia. She persuaded Moore, though not a kind master, to buy him that he might not be sold further South. Moore paid six hundred dollars for him, but asks her eight hundred. My most natural reflection was that he was even meaner than my townsman. As mean as a slaveholder!

What is Nature unless there is an eventful human life passing within her? Many joys and many sorrows are the lights and shadows in which she shows most beautiful. P. M. — To Walden and Filint’s. What are those sparrows in loose flocks which I have seen two or three weeks, — some this afternoon on the railroad causeway, — with small heads and rather long necks in proportion to body, which is longish and slender, yellowish-white or olivaceous breast, striped with dark, ashy sides of neck, whitish over and beneath the eye, and some white observed in tail when they fly? I think a dark bill and legs. They utter a peculiar note, not heard here at other seasons, somewhat like the linarias, a sort of shuffling or chuckling tche-tche- tche-tche, quickly uttered. Can they be the grass-bird ? They resemble it in marking. They are much larger than the tree sparrows. Methinks it [is] a very common fall bird.’ C. says he saw succory yesterday, and a loon on the pond the 30th ult. ‘The prinos berries are almost gone. I am somewhat surprised to find that the Aster undulatus at Walden is killed by the frost; only one low and obscure one has any flowers left. Therefore, though it is the latest aster that is abundant, I am not sure that it lasts absolutely longer than the A. puniceus, or even T’radescanti. I see no other flowers on the Peak. Poke berries there are still partly green, partly ripe, as usual. The leaves of the umbelled pyrola are as glossy as in the spring, which proves that they do not owe their glossiness in the spring to the influence of that season. ‘Two ducks on Walden. The Canada snap- dragon is still fresh and in flower by roadside near pond, and a sprig from root of Solidago nemoralis. I gather some fine large pignuts by the wall (near the beech trees) on Baker’s land. It is just the time to get these, and this seems to be quite early enough for most pignuts. I find that there have been plenty of beechnuts, and there are still some empty burs on the trees and many nuts on the ground, but I cannot find one with meat in it. The beech leaves have all fallen except some about the lower part of the trees, and they make a fine thick bed on the ground. They are very beautiful, firm, and perfect leaves, unspotted and not eaten by insects, of a handsome, clear leather- color, like a book bound in calf. Crisp and elastic; no wonder they make beds of them. Of a clear [space left in manuscript] or leather-color, more or less dark and remarkably free from stains and imperfections. ‘They cover the ground so perfectly and cleanly as to tempt you to recline on it and admire the beauty of their smooth boles from that position, covered with lichens of various colors—green, etc.—which you think you never see elsewhere. ‘They impress you as full of health and vigor, so that their bark can hardly contain their spirits but lies in folds or wrinkles about their ankles like a sock, with the embonpoint of infancy, wrinkles of fat.* The pollen [sic] of the Lycopodiwm dendroideum falls in showers or in clouds when my foot strikes it. How long? The witch-hazel appears to be nearly out of bloom, most of the flowers withering or frost-bitten. The shrub oak cups which I notice to-day have lost their acorns. I examined a squirrel’s nest in a tree which suggested to me (it having a foundation of twigs, coarse basketwork; above, shreds or fibres of bark and a few leaves) that perchance the squirrel, hike the mouse, sometimes used a deserted bird’s nest,—a crow’s or hawk’s. A red-tailed hawk. Among the buds, etc., etc., to be noticed now, remem- ber the alder and birch catkins, so large and con- spicuous, — on the alder, pretty red catkins dangling in bunches of three or four, — the minute red buds of the panicled andromeda, the roundish plump ones of the common hazel, the longish sharp ones of the witch-hazel, etc. The sun sets. We come home in the autumn twilight, which lasts long and is remarkably light, the air being purer, — clear white light, which penetrates the woods, —1s seen through the woods, — the leaves being gone. When the sun is set, there is no sudden contrast, no deep darkening, but a clear, strong white light still prevails, and the west finally glows with a generally diffused and moderate saffron-golden (?). Coming home by boat the other evening, I smelled a traveller’s pipe very strongly a third of a mile distant. He was crossing Wood’s Bridge. The evening star is now very bright; and is that Jupiter near it? I might put by themselves the November flowers, — flowers which survive severe frosts and the fall of the leaf. I see hedge-mustard very fresh. Those plants which are earliest in the spring have already made the most conspicuous preparation for that season. The skunk-cabbage spathes have started, the alder catkins, as I have said, hazel, etc.; and is there anything in the double scales of the maples, the prominent scales of willow and other catkins, some- times burst (?)? A part of the lambkill is turned dull-reddish. The last two, this and yesterday, fine days, but not gossamer ones.

6.30 a. Ms — To Swamp Bridge Brook by river. Considerable thin mist, high as two houses. Just as the sun is rising, many undoubtedly of the same white-in-tail sparrows described four pages back are flying high over my head west and northwest, above the thin mist, perchance to where they see the sun on the wood-side; with that peculiar shelly note. I think it was the 27th October I saw a goldfinch. There are two or three tree sparrows flitting and hop- ping along amid the alders and willows, with their fine silvery tchip, unlike the dry loud chip of the song sparrow. The Aster puniceus by brook is still common, though the worse for the wear, — low and more recent ones, — so that this, though a week ago it was less prevalent, must be set down as later than the A. undulatus. It bears the frosts much better, though it has been ex- posed to more severe ones from its position. And with this must be included that smooth and narrower- leaved kind, in other respects the same, one of which, at least, I think I have called A. longifolius. ‘They seem to run into each other. I am inclined to think it a smoother A. longifolius. Now is the time to observe the radical leaves of many plants, which put forth with springlike vigor and are so unlike the others with which we are familiar that it is sometimes difficult to identify them. =» What is that large circular green and red- dish one, flat in the grass of upland which V, I have seen for a fortnight ? * I love to see a man occasionally from whom the usnea f will hang as naturally as from a spruce. Cultivation exterminates the pine, but preserves the elm. Our front- yard evergreens are puny and trimmed up. Heard a bluebird about a week ago. There are very few phenomena which can be de- scribed indifferently as occurring at different seasons of the year, for they will occur with some essential difference. P. M. — To Ministerial Swamp. A warm westerly wind, the sky concealed and a storm gathering. A sober, cloudy afternoon. To-day I see yarrow, very bright; red clover; autumnal dande- lion; the silvery potentilla, and one Canadensis and the Norvegica; and a dandelion; Veronica arvensis ; and gnawel; one Aster levis (!) by the Hosmer Ditch; and, to my surprise, that solidago of September 11th, still showing some fresh yellow petals and a very fresh stem and leaves. It must be later than the speciosa, and this makes me doubt if it can be the séricta. It has a very angled stem and erect narrow pyramidal corymb. Also S. nemoralis by roadside. ‘This, though it was not so prevalent as the S. cesia three weeks ago, is still to be seen, while I have not seen the other for some days. It may outlast it, as the A. puniceus does the A. undulatus, though, by the way, I saw a very fresh A. undulatus this afternoon. I hear a few crickets and locusts (?) and see a very small brown beetle. The thistle radical leaves and fragrant everlasting not to be forgotten. Perhaps I have made the everlast- ings too late! A small gyrinus in Nut Meadow Brook. Since the change and fall of the leaf a remarkable prominence is given td the evergreens; their limits are more distinctly defined as you look at distant woods, since the leaves of deciduous trees ceased to be green and fell. Very small pollywogs in pools, one and a half or two inches long. I see many white pine cones fallen and open, with a few seeds still in them. The cones of the spruce are nearly empty, hanging down- ward;? those of the larch are also open, but, being upright, appear to have a few more seeds in them. I make it my business to extract from Nature what- ever nutriment she can furnish me, though at the risk of endless iteration. I milk the sky and the earth. The potamogeton seeds in Nut Meadow Brook have partly left the stem. I hear the sound of the woodchopper’s axe.

P. M. — To Hubbard’s Close. I find no traces of the fringed gentian there, so that in low meadows I suspect it does not last very late. Hear a nuthatch. The fertile catkins of the yellow birch appear to be in the same state with those of the white, and their scales are also shaped like birds, but > ew much larger. The great osmundas in Hubbard’s Swamp have universally [ lost their leafets, except perhaps one | or two small crisped brown ones at the extremity, and the bare midribs alone are left. They look thin and Novemberish.

P. M.— To Hubbard Bathing-Place for shrubs. Most of the muskrat-cabins were lately covered by the flood, but now that it has gone down in a great measure, leaving the cranberries stranded amid the wreck of rushes, reeds, grass, etc., I notice that they have not been washed away or much injured, as a heap of manure would have been, they are so artificially constructed. Moreover, for the most part they are protected, as well as concealed, by the button-bushes, willows, or weeds about them. What exactly are they for? This is not their breeding season. I think that they are merely an artifical bank, an air-chamber near the water, houses of refuge. But why do they need them more at this season than in the summer, it may be asked. Perhaps they are constructed just before the rise of the water in the fall and winter, so that they may not have to swim so far as the flood would require in order to eat their clams. I heard some pleasant notes from tree sparrows on the willows as I paddled by. The buds of the rhodora are among the more conspicuous now, and yet more its seed-vessels, many if not most of which are not yet dry, but purplish.

Sunday. 2.30 p. Mm. — To Lee’s Cliff. I saw yesterday for a moment by the river a small olivaceous-yellow bird; possibly a goldfinch, but I think too yellow. I see some gossamer on the causeway this afternoon, though it is very windy; but it requires such a day as October 31st. It is remarkable how little we attend to what is passing before us constantly, unless our genius directs our attention that way. There are these little sparrows with white in tail, perhaps the prevailing bird of late, which have flitted before me so many falls and springs, and yet they have been as it were strangers to me, and I have not inquired whence they came:or whither they were going, or what their habits were. It is surprising how little most of us are contented to know about the sparrows which drift about in the air before us just before the first snows. I hear the downy woodpecker’s metallic tchip or peep. Now I see where many a bird builded last spring or summer. ‘These are leaves which do not fall. How similar in the main the nests of birds and squirrels and mice! I am not absolutely certain that the mice do not make the whole nest in a bush sometimes, instead of building on a bird’s nest. There is in the squirrel in this respect an approach to the bird, and, beside, one of his family is partially winged. Here, too, is a sort of link between quadrupeds and birds. I perceive that the starting of the amelanchier buds is a very common phenomenon, this fall at least, and when partially unfolded they are frost-bitten. See a few robins. Climbed the wooded hill by Holden’s spruce swamp and got a novel view of the river and Fair Haven Bay through the almost leafless woods. How much handsomer a river or lake such as ours, seen thus through a foreground of scattered or else partially leaf- less trees, though at a considerable distance this side of it, especially if the water is open, without wooded 4 aieienaanialiodes =k RT oA AME pe rt f- a Se WS os oor N Pt moe ne yen - 4 ad 7 | | —* at pT eee See . — — Ti) | ae he ima cS AF ‘ oe g a Wa rm > ene nt Oh eens nee Aa r at py rt aT | ny oe oy 77, KUN ery - om mrt Ts We toct{' - g , i 3 \ s | eee eon AE & > is UCa UY: eet ie -himertlil amen a id v — © RAC be od oe ‘ciated Qe : REC rT (yt —— Se re SC it ioe m - : Po SS > roa a a Bey Sipe? Ef rat or st — | fe? : Af, a TZ "4 > \ . ~~ = s, ey Lo cat Reza a: ar. ie ‘ a4 aS a) re .— Kr - , - = om 2 wee / 7 : A x fs SSS mi =f a Fi ES ray CX shores or isles! It is the most perfect and beautiful of all frames, which yet the sketcher is commonly careful to brush aside. I mean a pretty thick fore- ground, a view of the distant water through the near forest, through a thousand little vistas, as we are rush- ing toward the former, — that intimate mingling of wood and water which excites an expectation which the near and open view rarely realizes. We prefer that some part be concealed, which our imagination may navigate. Still the Canada snapdragon, yarrow, autumnal dandelion, tansy, shepherd’s-purse, silvery cinquefoil, witch-hazel. The sweet-briar hips are abundant and fresh, a dozen sometimes crowded in a space of two inches square. Their form is a handsome oval with a flat apex. Is it not somewhat like an olive-jar? The hips hold on, then, though the haws have fallen, and the prinos, too, for the most part. There are also some fragrant and green leaves left. These are about the prettiest red berries that we have. Gathered some of those fine large mocker-nut (?) hickory nuts, which are now in their prime (Carya tomentosa ?). I perceived a faint sweetness in the dry, crisp leaves on the ground (there were some also on the tree), and I perceive that Emerson speaks of their resinous-scented leaves. The witch-hazel spray is peculiar and interesting, with little knubs at short intervals, zig- ie ° zag, crinkle-crankle. How happens it? * Ta Did the leaves grow so close? The bud is i long against the stem, with a neck to it. The fever-bush has small roundish buds, two or three commonly to- gether, probably the blossom-buds. The rhodora buds are purplish, as well as the not yet dry seed-vessels, smaller but somewhat like the swamp-pink. The alter- nate cornel, small, very dark reddish buds, on forking, smooth, slender twigs at long intervals. The panicled andromeda, minute pointed red buds, hugging the curving stems. The plump, roundish, club-shaped, well-protected buds of the alders, and rich purplish or mulberry catkins, three, four, or five together. The red maple buds, showing three or more sets of scales. The remarkable roundish, plump red buds of the high y, blueberry. The four-sided, long (five eighths Z of an inch), spear-head-shaped buds of the ff Viburnum Lentago, at the end of forked twigs, probably blossom-buds, with minute leaf-buds lower on sides of twigs. Some sallow buds already — burst their scales and show the woolly catkins, red- dish at base. Little brownish, scale-like buds on the ends of the red cedar leaves or leafets (branchlets), probably male blossom-buds. The creeping juniper berries are yet green, with three white, swelling lips at apex and very minute. buds in the axils of the leaves.