May is the paragon of months for the angler. Take it in the middle of the month, and if the tourist following and whipping some well-known trout stream, fails to catch fish, let him neither condemn the stream or the season, but with reason draw the conclusion that he is a bungler in the art of trout-fishing. The genial breezes and soft skies should draw every genuine lover of nature to the mountains. The deciduous forests of the valleys are again beautiful with their fresh foliage, destroying the contrast of the winter between their dun outlines and the green fronts of the higher pine groves, or the bodies of the giant hemlocks scattered in their midst. Winter’s traces, however, are not fully concealed; for there is still a line of bare woods between the green line slowly creeping up the slopes and the lower edges of the lofty, black balsam wildernesses. But every day, new sprouts of leaves appear, and soon the entire body of the wood-lands will have donned its summer mantle. The grass is of a bright green on the hill-sides; in the orchards, the apple trees are in full bloom; while the blossoms of the cherry are being scattered on the wings of breezes from the aromatic balsams. The valleys, on either side the narrow woods lining the banks of the streams, are dark green with sprouting fields of wheat and rye, or of lighter shade where the tender blades of the corn are springing. In the forests which belt the streams, the bell-wood is white with blossoms, and every dog-wood white with flowers. “When the dog-wood is in bloom, then is the time to catch trout,” is a true, though trite, observation. At the same time the sassafras is yellow with buds, and the red maple, purple. A straggler along the wood-land path, between hedges of the budding kalmia, or ivy as the mountaineers term it, will be regaled with the delicious fragrance of the wild-plum and crab-apple whose white and pink blossomed trees are often entirely hidden by the clumps of alder or the close sides of the hedges. The wild grape also sheds an unequalled perfume. The path occasionally issues from the shrubbery, and pursues its way under the open trees, with the hurrying stream on one hand, and pleasing glades on the other. The woodland is vocal with the robin, red-bird and oriole, and the liquid murmur of the stream. The early violet still graces the sides of the path, and the crimson-tipped daisy is to be found in sunny spaces.