Look at this craggy precipice of rock, lost above among the green-tasselled evergreens, and trickling with crystal drops from every drooping sprig of moss. How its rugged surface is painted with the mottled lichens of every hue, here like a faint tinge of cool sage-green, and there in large brown blotches of rich color! See the fringe of ferns that bursts from the fissure across its surface. There the trillium hangs its three-cleft flower of rich maroon; and later we shall see the fern-like spray of Solomon’s-seal swinging its little row of straw-colored bells from the ledge above. Airy columbines, too, shall float their scarlet pendants on fragile stems, and with their graceful nod tell of the slightest breeze, when all else is still. What is that cinnamon-brown bird that hops along the stone wall yonder? Now he alights upon the tulip-tree, and swells his speckled breast in a series of short experiments--a broken song, in which every note or call has its twin echo. A “mocking-thrush” he is, indeed, for he mimics his own song from morn till night in all the thickets and pasture-lands. Take care there! why, you almost trod upon that feathery tuft of “Dutchman’s breeches.” Oh, who is he that dared to clothe this sweet blossom in such an ignominious title? Where is the Dutchman that ever wore unmentionables of such exquisite pink satin as that pale _dicentra_ wears? No wonder their little broken hearts droop at the insult! [Illustration: THE COLUMBINE.] The grotesque Jack-in-the-pulpit, rising above that crumbling log, is named more to my mind. There he stands beneath his striped canopy, and preaches to me a sermon on the well-remembered rashness of my youth in trifling with that subterranean bulb from which he grows. But I ignored his warning in those early days. I only knew that a real nice boy across the way seemed very fond of those little Indian turnips, called them “sugar-roots,” and said that they were full of honey. And as he bit off his eager mouthful, and refused to let me taste, I sought one for myself, and, generous boy that he was, he showed me where to find the buried treasure. It was like a small turnip, an innocent-looking affair (and so was the nice boy’s modelled piece of apple, by-the-way). But oh! the sudden revelation of the red-hot reservoir of chain-lightning that crammed that innocent bulb! Even as I think of it, how I long once more to interview that real nice boy who opened up the mysteries of the “sugar-root” to my tempted curiosity. Let boys beware of this wild, red-hot coal; and should they be impelled by a desire to test the unknown flavor, let them solace themselves with a less dangerous mixture of four papers of cambric needles and a spoonful of pounded glass. This will give a faint suggestion of the racy pungency of the Indian turnip. Were some kind friend at the present day to seek to kill me off with poisoned food, I should forthwith have him arrested on a charge of