Imatges de pàgina
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the ground. Periwinkles, and lungwort, or pulmonaria-the latter with its purple flowers and spotted hairy leaves are almost better known as garden than as wild flowers; but they may be gathered at times apparently wild.

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We have been so long giving our attention to the floral treasures of field and hedge-row, our eyes have looked so constantly downward, that we almost forget that this month many of our statelier trees offering their flowers for examination. Perhaps our botanist will scarcely consider them flowers, for many of them are but dull of hue. The oak, the ash, the birch, the chestnut, are all now in blossom. Of these, all, except the ash, bear their blossoms like the hazel -the fertile flowers on one part of the stem, and the barren ones in a drooping catkin on another. Nothing can be more beautiful than the pendent tassels, as we may call them, of the birch, when the tree is in full bloom. The combination of slender drooping twigs, and of hanging blossoms, is the perfection of graceful beauty, and the place to see it is the side of a highland glen. Should any of my readers go there to look for it, they may as well go a little farther and higher, to look for the crowberry's purple flowers, which give promise of abundant food in autumn to the moor game which feed on its dark purple berries. The very large family of willows contributes its show of catkins, barren and fertile. All these it is well for the young botanist to exercise himself in examining. In the case of those trees which blossom before the leaves appear, if the flower is preserved, the leaves should be added afterwards; and in the case of the willows, care taken that the

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