The locust (_Robinia Pseudacacia_) was one of the earliest trees introduced into Europe from America (by one Robin, about 1601); now extensively propagated in England, France, and Germany. Used for trunnels to the exclusion of all others in the Middle and Southern States. Instead of decaying, acquire hardness with time. _May 18. Sunday._ Lady’s-slipper almost fully blossomed. The log of a canoe birch on Fair Haven, cut down the last winter, more than a foot in diameter at the stump; one foot in diameter at ten feet from the ground. I observed that all parts of the epidermis exposed to the air and light were white, but the inner surfaces, freshly exposed, were a buff or salmon-color. Sinclair says that in winter it is white throughout. But this was cut before the sap flowed??! Was there any sap in the log? I counted about fifty rings. The shrub oaks are now blossoming. The scarlet tanagers are come. The oak leaves of all colors are just expanding, and are more beautiful than most flowers. The hickory buds are almost leaves. The landscape has a new life and light infused into it. The deciduous trees are springing, to countenance the pines, which are evergreen. It seems to take but one summer day to fetch the summer in. The turning-point between winter and summer is reached. The birds are in full blast. There is a peculiar freshness about the landscape; you scent the fragrance of new leaves, of hickory and sassafras, etc. And to the eye the forest presents the tenderest green. The blooming of the apple trees is becoming general. I think that I have made out two kinds of poplar,—the _Populus tremuloides_, or American aspen, and the _P. grandidentata_, or large American aspen, whose young leaves are downy. * * * * * Michaux says that the locust begins to convert its sap into perfect wood from the third year; which is not done by the oak, the chestnut, the beech, and the elm till after the tenth or the fifteenth year. He quotes the saying, “The foot of the owner is the best manure for his land.” “He” is Augustus L. Hillhouse, who writes the account of the olive at the request of Michaux. The elder Michaux found the balsam poplar (_P. balsamifera_) very abundant on Lake St. John and the Saguenay River, where it is eighty feet high and three feet in diameter. This, however, is distinct from the _P. candicans_, heart-leaved balsam poplar, which M. finds hereabouts, though never in the woods, and does not know where it came from. He praises the Lombardy poplar because, its limbs being compressed about the trunk, it does not interfere with the walls of a house nor obstruct the windows. No wood equal to our black ash for oars, so pliant and elastic and strong, second only to hickory for handspikes; used also for chair-bottoms and riddles. The French call the nettle-tree _bois inconnu_. Our white elm (_Ulmus Americana_) “the most magnificent vegetable of the temperate zone.”