Still more to the purpose, perhaps, more conspicuous, at all events, as well as nearer to maturity, and so more distinctly prophetic of spring, are the two kinds of flower-buds that adorn the ends of the twigs. These also are of a deep purplish tint, which in the case of the larger (staminate) catkins turns to a lovely green on the shaded under side. Flower-buds, I call them; but they are rather packages of bud-stuff wrapped tightly against the weather, cover overlapping cover. The best shingling of the most expert carpenter could not be more absolutely rain-proof. “Now do your worst,” says the alder. The mud freezes about its roots and the water about the base of its stem, but it keeps its banners flying. Why it should be at such pains to anticipate the season is more than I can tell. Perhaps it is none of my business. Enough that it is the alder’s way. There is no swamp in New England but has a shorter and brighter winter because of it. This smooth, freckled, reddish-barked twig is black birch (or sweet birch), taken from a sapling, and therefore bearing no aments, which on adult trees are already things of grace and promise. I broke it (it invites breaking by its extreme fragility) for its leaf-buds, pointed, parti-colored,--brown and yellowish green,--tender-looking, but hardy enough to withstand all the rigors of New England frost. The broken end of the branch, where I get the spicy fragrance of the inner bark, brings back a sense of half-forgotten boyish pleasures. I used to nibble the bark in spring. A little dry it was, as I remember it, but it had the spicy taste of wintergreen (checkerberry), without the latter’s almost excessive pungency, or bite. Some of my country-bred readers must have been accustomed to eat the tender reddish young checkerberry leaves, and will understand perfectly what I mean by that word “bite.” I wonder if they had our curious Old Colony name for those vernal dainties. It sounds like cannibalism, but we gathered them and ate them in all innocence (the taste is on my tongue now) as “youngsters.” No doubt the tree gets its name, “sweet birch,” from this savoriness of its green inner bark, rather than from the pedagogic employment of its branches in schoolrooms as a means of promoting the sweet uses of adversity.