We have become well known in the valley, after many years; so that, although we are almost the only walkers there, our ambulatory eccentricity has mostly ceased to provoke comment. At all events, the people no longer look upon us as men broken out of Bedlam. Time, we may say, has established our innocence. If a recent comer expresses concern as we go past, some older resident reassures him. “They are harmless,” he says. “There used to be three of them. They pull weeds, as you see; the older one has his hands full of them now. Yes, they are branches of thorn-bushes. They always carry opera-glasses, too. We used to think they were looking for land to buy. Old ----, up on the hill in Lisbon, tried to sell them his farm at a fancy figure, but they didn’t bite. I reckon they know a thing or two, for all their queer ways. One of ’em knows how to write, anyhow; he is always taking out pencil and paper. There! you see how he does. He sets down a word or two, and away he goes again.” It is all true. We looked at plants, and sometimes gathered them. The botanist had thorn-bushes on his mind, the genus _Cratægus_ being a hard one, and, as I judged, newly under revision. I professed no knowledge upon so recondite a subject, but was proud to serve the cause of science by pointing out a bush here and there. One hot afternoon, too, after a pretty long forenoon jaunt, I nearly walked my legs off, as the strong old saying is, following my leader far up the Landaff Valley (“down Easton way”) to visit a bush of which some one had brought him word. It was an excellent specimen, the best we had yet seen; but it was nothing new, and by no means so handsome or so interesting as one found afterward by accident on our way to Bethlehem. That was indeed a beauty, and its abundant fruit a miracle of color. Once I detected an aster which the botanist had passed by and yet, upon a second look, thought worth taking home; it was probably _Lindleyanus_, he said, and the event proved it; and at another time my eye caught by the wayside a bunch of chokecherry shrubs hung with yellow clusters. We were in a carriage at the time, four old Franconians, and not one of us had ever seen such a thing here before. Three of us had never seen such a thing anywhere; for my own part, I was in a state of something like excitement; but the _Cratægus_ collector, who knows American trees if anybody does, said: “Yes, the yellow variety is growing in the Arnold Arboretum, and is mentioned in the latest edition of Gray’s Manual.” Bushes have been found at Dedham, Massachusetts, it appears. The maker of the Manual seems not to have been aware of their having been noticed anywhere else; but since my return home I have been informed that they are not uncommon in the neighborhood of Montreal, where yellow chokecherries are “found with the ordinary form in the markets”!