Next to the southern pine, the most characteristic tree of the Atlantic coastal plain southward from Virginia and westward through the Gulf States, is the cypress, also a conifer, but, like the tamarack, sheds its leaves in the autumn. The cypress grows especially in swampy localities, and has a widely expanded base, suitable for support on marshy soil, and reaches a large girth, although seldom over 75 feet high. Aged and most picturesque examples are growing in isolated positions in Lake Drummond, the central water body of the Dismal Swamp, and in many other similar situations in the belt of low country fringing the borders of the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico. Its wood is used for most of the purposes for which the southern pine is employed, and now that the white pine is approaching extinction, is to a considerable extent supplying the demand for cabinet-wood. In glancing at the larger and most numerous trees of the Atlantic forest, and those of greatest utility, we should not neglect the humbler plants, usually of little, if any, purely commercial value, but priceless on account of their beauty and the fragrance of their flowers, which grow beneath the shade of their larger and more stately associates or are content to possess the local areas, perhaps high on the mountains, where the conditions of climate or soil are unfavourable for the growth of large trees. Throughout the eastern portion of the United States, but more especially on the slopes and summit portions of the Appalachians, there are many species of azalea, laurel, rhododendron, etc., which grow luxuriantly and in spring and early summer furnish a wealth of bloom that is scarcely rivalled elsewhere on the continent. In this same region also, but extending westward to Michigan and Minnesota, and even to eastern Nebraska, grows the redbud or Judas-tree, which each May becomes as thickly set throughout all its branches with small crimson blossoms as are the tree-like coral in tropical seas with expanded polyps. This beautiful tree of low growth many times gives to the mountains of Virginia, when seen from a distance, a delicate blush like that which the osiers earlier in the spring impart to the marshy vales and river-banks. A companion of the redbud, but far more widely distributed, is the dogwood or cornel, of several species, the most conspicuous of which, and in the Appalachian region the most common, is the flowering dogwood. In May and June this species puts out a profusion of clusters of small greenish flowers, each of which is surrounded by a broadly expanded and very showy corolla-like involucre, composed of four white or pinkish inversely heart-shaped leaves. When the cornel is at the height of its spring-time glory it stands forth amid the tender greens, russets, and pinks of the unfolding leaves of the various trees and shrubs among which it grows as if the orchards and forests had been commingled by some fairy gardener. In autumn the cornel again becomes