ated too deep into the heart of the tree.

The maple and the birch are the kings of the Canadian forest. Two
strong, tall, unbending trees, they stand as fit pillars to the entrance
of a boreal climate. For fuel they rank first on the market of hard
woods, and each has its special advantage. The maple is rather more
appreciated for its heating properties; the birch is decidedly more
valuable for its ash. The ash of the birch is a fair thing to see, white
as snow and soft under the touch as flour. The leaf of the maple and
bark of the birch are national emblems in Canada, and it is well that
they should be, for they are both associated with the history of the
country, and enter largely into its domestic comforts. The annals of New
France may be compared to an album of maple leaves bound in a scroll of
birchen bark, and a contemporary writer in Quebec has adopted the idea
for the title of one of his works. The solid beams of the Canadian house
are hewn out of columns of birch, as sound if not so fragrant as the
cedar of Lebanon, and the furniture of the Canadian home is wrought of
bird-eye maple, susceptible of the velvetest polish, and more beautiful,
because more variagated, than walnut or mahogany.

Every season of the year has its peculiar amusements, and among a people
of primitive habits, these amusements are gone through with a kind of
religious observance. There is the hay-time in summer when, under the
sultry sky, and amid the strong scents of the hardier field-flowers, the
huge wain is driven from the stubble field into the shadows of the
impending woods, and around it the workers sing and make merry in token
of joy for the abundant yield of sweet grass that shall fatten the kine
in the drear barren months of snow. The young men rest on their scythes,
that glisten like Turkish sabres, and, from under their broad-brimmed
hats of straw, the town girls smile, as they tress garlands of garish
flowers to bind the last and the largest of the sheaves.

In autumn, there is the season of the harvest with its traditional
ceremonies of a religious or convivial nature. The granary is decorated
up to the roof in hangings of odorous verdure, and the barn floor is
cleared for the dance of the weary feet that have long toiled in the
five acre. Under the crescent moon, in those mild September evenings,
the old superstitions of the Saxon Druids are repeated, while many a
beautiful Norma, crowned with vervain and mistletoe, a gle