seeds, partially embedded in the surface, after the same manner as the strawberry.  The fruit grows close to the stalk, completely surrounding it, and forming a long spike of the richest crimson berries.  I have gathered branches a foot in length, closely covered with the beautiful looking fruit, and have regretted that it was so insipid in its flavour as to make it uneatable.  On the banks of creeks and in rich ground, it grows most luxuriantly, one root sending up twenty or thirty branches, drooping with the weight of their magnificent burden.  As the middle and superior stems ripen and decay, the lateral ones come on, presenting a constant succession of fruit from July till the frosts nip them off in September.

The Indians use the juice of this plant as a dye, and are said to eat the berries:  it is often made use of as a substitute for red ink, but it is liable to fade unless mingled with alum.  A friend of mine told me she had been induced to cross a letter she was sending to a relative in England with this strawberry ink, but not having taken the precaution to fix the colour, when the anxiously expected epistle arrived, one-half of it proved quite unintelligible, the colours having faded nearly to white; so that instead of affording satisfaction, it proved only a source of vexation and embarrassment to the reader, and of mortification to the writer.

The blood-root, sanguinaria, or puccoon, as it is termed by some of the native tribes, is worthy of attention from the root to the flower.  As soon as the sun of April has warmed the earth and loosened it from its frozen bonds, you may distinguish a number of purely white buds, elevated on a naked footstalk, and partially enfolded in a handsome vine-shaped leaf, of a pale bluish green, curiously veined on the under side with pale orange.  The leaf springs singly from a thick juicy fibrous root, which, on being broken, emits a quantity of liquor from its pores of a bright orange scarlet colour:  this juice is used by the Indians as a dye, and also in the cure of rheumatic, and cutaneous complaints.  The flowers of the sanguinaria resemble the white crocus very closely:  when it first comes up the bud is supported by the leaf, and is folded together with it; the flower, however, soon elevates itself above its protector, while the leaf having performed its duty of guardian to the tender bud, expands to its full size.  A rich black vegetable mould at the edges of the clearings seems the favourite soil for this plant.

The scarlet columbine is another of my favourite flowers; it is bright red, with yellow linings to the tubes.  The nectaries are more elongated than the garden columbines, and form a sort of mural crown, surmounted with little balls at the tips.  A tall graceful plant, with its brilliant waving blossoms, is this columbine; it grows both in the sunshine and the shade, not perhaps in deep shady woods, but where the under brush has been removed by the running of the fire or the axe of the chopper; it seems even to flourish in poor stony soils, and may be found near every dwelling.  The feathered columbine delights in moist open swamps, and the banks of rivulets; it grows to the height of three, and even four and five feet, and is very ornamental.