Early in this month opens the far-famed basswood or linden, _Tilia Americana_ (Fig. 93), which, for the profusion and quality of its honey has no superior. The tree, too, from its great spreading top and fine foliage, is magnificent for shade. Five of these trees are within two rods of my study window, and their grateful fragrance, and beautiful form and shade, have often been the subject of remark by visitors. [Illustration: Fig. 93.--_Basswood._] Figwort, _Scrophularia nodosa_ (Fig. 94), often called rattle-weed, as the seeds will rattle in the pod, and carpenter's square, as it has a square stalk, is an insignificant looking weed, with inconspicuous flowers, that afford abundant nectar from the middle of July till frost. I have received almost as many for identification as I have of the asters and golden-rods. Prof. Beal remarked to me a year or two since, that it hardly seemed possible that it could be so valuable. We cannot always rightly estimate by appearances alone. It is a very valuable plant to be scattered in waste places. [Illustration: Fig. 94.--_Figwort._] That beautiful and valuable honey plant, from Minnesota, Colorado, and the Rocky Mountains, cleome, or the Rocky Mountain bee-plant, _Cleome integrifolia_ (Fig. 96), if self-sown, or sown early in spring, blooms by the middle of July, and lasts for long weeks. Nor can anything be more gay than these brilliant flowers, alive with bees all through the long fall. This should be planted in fall or spring, in drills two feet apart, the plants six inches apart in the drills. The seeds, which grow in pods, are very numerous, and are said to be valuable for chickens. Now, too, commence to bloom the numerous eupatoriums, or bonesets, or thoroughworts (Fig. 97), which fill the marshes of our country, and the hives as well, with their rich golden nectar--precursors of that profusion of bloom of this composite order, whose many species are even now budding in preparation for the sea of flowers which will deck the marsh-lands of August and September. Wild bergamot, too, _Monarda fistulosa_, which, like the thistles, is of importance to the apiarist, blooms in July. [Illustration: Fig. 95.--_Button Bush._] [Illustration: Fig. 96.--_Rocky Mountain Bee-Plant._]