Climbing higher, I saw for the first time the gradual dwarfing of the pines in compliance with climate, and on the summit discovered creeping mats of the arctic willow overgrown with silky catkins, and patches of the dwarf vaccinium with its round flowers sprinkled in the grass like purple hail; while in every direction the landscape stretched sublimely away in fresh wildnessa manuscript written by the hand of Nature alone.

Both this and the following species, by reason of the resemblance between their female catkins and those of the Hop, and between their leaves and those of the Hornbeam, have acquired the very descriptive name of Hop Hornbeam.

Here you find mats of the curious dwarf willow scarce an inch high, yet sending up a multitude of gray silky catkins, illumined here and there with, the purple cups and bells of bryanthus and vaccinium.

I made camp a few hundred yards from the road by a creek, along the banks of which grew many willows, and some little groves of box-elders and popples, which latter in this favorable locality grew eight or ten feet tall, and were already breaking out their soft greenish catkins and tender, quivering, pointed leaves: in one of these clumps I hid my wagon, and in the midst of it I kindled my camp-fire.

Then, as the recollection of the velvet-gown and mob-cap episode recurs to me, I repent me, and, crossing the road, pick up again my harmless catkins and snow-drops, and rearrange them.

This is a neat little shrub, usually about 4 feet high, with oblong-lanceolate leaves, and inconspicuous catkins.

In winter the distant copse seemed black; now it appears of a dull reddish brown from the innumerable catkins and buds.

The flowers that bear the stamens grow on loose scaly catkins, as you may see in this branch.

The long, cylindrical catkins, of a yellowish-green colour, are usually borne in such abundance that the tree is, during the month of June, one of particular interest and beauty.

The earliest familiar token of the coming season is the expansion of the stiff catkins of the alder into soft, drooping tresses.