ed by getting
hold of my friends of the hedges and hills in the new ways I have
described. At times I even feel that I have become a fully accepted
member of the Fraternity of the Living Earth, for I have already
received many of the benefits which go with that association; and I know
now for a certainty that it makes no objection to its members because
they are old, or sad, or have sinned, but welcomes them all alike.

The essential taste of the cherry and peach and all their numerous
relatives is, in variation, that of the peach pit, so that the whole
tribe may be easily recognized, though it was some time before I could
tell with certainty the peach from the cherry. The oak shoot, when
chewed a little, tastes exactly like the smell of new oak lumber; the
maple has a peculiar taste and smell of its own that I can find no
comparison for, and the poplar is one of the bitterest trees that ever I
have tasted. The trees--pines, spruces, hemlocks, balsams, cedars--are
to me about the pleasantest of all, both in taste and odour, and though
the spruces and pines taste and smell much alike at first, one soon
learns to distinguish them. The elm has a rather agreeable, nondescript,
bitterish taste, but the linden is gummy and of a mediocre quality, like
the tree itself, which I dislike. Some of the sweetest flowering
shrubs, such as the lilac, have the bitterest of leaves and twigs or,
like certain kinds of clematis, have a seed that when green is sharper
than cayenne pepper, while others, like the rose, are pleasanter in
flavour. The ash tree is not too bitter and a little sour.

I give here only a few of the commoner examples, for I wish to make this
no tedious catalogue of the flavours of the green people. I am not a
scientist, nor would wish to be taken for one. Only last winter I had my
pretensions sadly shocked when I tasted twigs cut from various trees and
shrubs and tried to identify them by taste or by smell, and while it was
a pleasing experiment I found I could not certainly place above half of
them; partly, no doubt, because many growing things keep their flavours
well wrapped up in winter. No, I have not gone far upon this pleasant
road, but neither am I in any great hurry; for there yet remains much
time in this and my future lives to conquer the secrets of the earth. I
plan to devote at least one entire life to science, and may find I need
several!

One great reason why the sense of taste and the sense of smell