sunset sky are made of the shell-bark hickory whose inner bud scales enlarge into enormous, leathery bracts, often crimsoning into rare brilliance. Circles of creamy white here and there among the hazel brush mark the later blossoms of the sweet viburnum. Sweeping curves like sculptured arms bearing thickly clustered hemispheres of purplish white are seen on the rocky slope where the nine-bark grows above the lingering columbines. White wands which look so beautiful are merely the ends of the common tall blackberry, and the wild rose sweetens the same banks. Flattish clusters of creamy white blossoms are the loose cymes of the red osier dogwood, but it is not nearly so beautiful now as it was last January when its blood-red stems made a striking contrast with the snow. The bright carmine bark has faded to a dull green and the shrub is a disappointment now, despite its blossoms. So is the cottonwood a disappointment. Its wealth of shining green foliage is beautiful, yet we sigh for the lost glory of the midwinter days when the horizontal rays of the setting sun made aureoles of golden light around its yellow, shining limbs.

It is worth while on a walk in June to sit and look at the grass. How tame and dreary would be the landscape without it! How soul starved would have been mankind, condemned to live without the restfulness of its unobtrusive beauty! That is why the first command, after the waters had been gathered into one place and the dry land appeared, was, “Let the earth bring forth grass.” The grasses cover the earth like a beautiful garment from Kerguelen land in the Antarctic regions to the extreme limit of vegetation beyond the Polar circle. They climb the Andes, the Rockies, and the Himalayas to the very line of eternal snow, and they creep to the bottom of every valley where man dares set his foot. They come up fresh and green from the melting snows of earliest spring and linger in sunny autumn glens when all else is dead and drear. They give intense interest to the botanist as he remembers that there are thirty-five hundred different species, a thousand of which are in North America and a fourth of that number in our own state. They give him delightful studies as he patiently compares their infinite variations of culms and glumes, spikes, racemes, and panicles. They give joy to the farmer with their wealth of protein and fat and albuminoid, the material to do the work and make the wealth of the world bulging from their succulent stems. And they are fascinating most of all to the nature-lover as he sees them gently wave in the June sunshine or flow like a swift river across the field before a quick gust of wind. Such variety of color! Here an emerald streak and there a soft blue shadow, yonder a matchless olive green, and still farther a cool gray: spreading like an enamel over the hillside where the cattle have cropped them, and waving tall and fine above the crimsoning blossoms of the clover; glittering with countless gems in the morning dews and musicful with the happy songs and call notes of the quail and prairie chicken, the meadow lark, the bob-o-link, and the dickcissel whose young are safe among the protection of the myriad stems. Tall wild rice and wild rye grow on the flood-plain and by the streams where the tall buttercups shine like bits of gold and the blackbirds have their home; bushy blue stem on the prairies and in the open woods where the golden squaw weed and the wild geranium make charming patterns of yellow and pink and purple and some of the painted cup left over from May still glows like spots of scarlet rain; tall grama grass on the dry prairies and gravelly knolls, whitened by the small spurge and yellowed by the creeping cinquefoil; nodding fescue in the sterile soils where the robin’s plantain and the sheep sorrel have succeeded the early everlasting; satin grasses in the moist soil of the open woodlands where the fine white flowers of the Canada anemone blow, and slough grass in the marshy meadows where the white-crossed flowers of the sharp spring are fading, and the woolly stem of the bitter boneset is lengthening; reed grass and floating manna grass in the swamps where the broad arrow leaves of the sagittaria fringe the shore and the floating leaves and fragrant blossoms of the water lilies adorn the pond. The three days’ rain beginning with a soft drizzle and increasing into a steady storm which drives against the face with cutting force and shakes in sheets like waving banners across the wind-swept prairie only adds more variety to the beauties of the grass; and when the still, sweet morning comes, the pure green prairies make us feel that all stain of sin and shame has been washed from the world.

Where the grasses grow the best, there Providence has provided most abundantly for the wealth and the comfort of mankind. The rich verdure of the meadows is the visible sign of the fruitful soil beneath the fattening clouds above. The clover and the early hay fill the June fields with fragrance and the grass in the parks and lawns invite toil-worn bodies to rest and comfort. What wonder Bryant wished to die in June, the month when the grasses tenderly creep over the mounds above tired dust and gently soothe the grief of the loved ones left behind.

The cold May seemed to detract little from the beauty and interest of the woodlands. The warblers, the humming bird, the tanager, the bob-o-link, the ovenbird, the vireos, the chat, the red start, the oriole, the dickcissel, the black-billed cuckoo, all greeted their friends as numerously as ever. So with the flowers: the columbine, the shooting star, the painted cup, the puccoon, the beautiful though inodorous large white trillium, the delicate little corydalis, the star grass and the lady’s slipper, all came within a week of their average time in spite of the cold, and the showy orchis was only just over into June. May added fifty-four new species of flowers to the April list, according to the record of a single observer whose leisure is limited. Those who added the forty odd May arrivals in bird land to their April lists may have no such thrilling walks in June, but they may study their feathered friends of the summer, which is better, and if passion for new lists is not satiated, try the flowers instead of the birds. June should yield a list of a hundred twenty-five different species, not including the grasses, and a very diligent flower-lover will make it much longer.