retty hard, many buds begin to sweat as well as to
glow; they exude a brown, fragrant, gummy substance that affords the
honey-bee her first cement and hive varnish. The hickory, the
horse-chestnut, the plane-tree, the poplars, are all coated with this
April myrrh. That of certain poplars, like the Balm of Gilead, is the
most noticeable and fragrant,--no spring incense more agreeable. Its
perfume is often upon the April breeze. I pick up the bud scales of
the poplars along the road, long brown scales like the beaks of birds,
and they leave a rich gummy odor in my hand that lasts for hours. I
frequently detect the same odor about my hives when the bees are
making all snug against the rains, or against the millers. When used
by the bees, we call it propolis. Virgil refers to it as a "glue more
adhesive than bird-lime and the pitch of Phrygian Ida." Pliny says it
is extracted from the tears of the elm, the willow, and the reed. The
bees often have serious work to detach it from their leg-baskets, and
make it stick only where they want it to.

The bud scales begin to drop in April, and by May Day the scales have
fallen from the eyes of every branch in the forest. In most cases the
bud has an inner wrapping that does not fall so soon. In the hickory
this inner wrapping is like a great livid membrane, an inch or more in
length, thick, fleshy, and shining. It clasps the tender leaves about
as if both protecting and nursing them. As the leaves develop, these
membranous wrappings curl back, and finally wither and fall. In the
plane-tree, or sycamore, this inner wrapping of the bud is a little
pelisse of soft yellow or tawny fur. When it is cast off, it is the
size of one's thumb nail, and suggests the delicate skin of some
golden-haired mole. The young sycamore balls lay aside their fur
wrappings early in May. The flower tassels of the European maple, too,
come packed in a slightly furry covering. The long and fleshy inner
scales that enfold the flowers and leaves are of a clear olive green,
thinly covered with silken hairs like the young of some animals. Our
sugar maple is less striking and beautiful in the bud, but the flowers
are more graceful and fringelike.

Some trees have no bud scales. The sumac presents in early spring a
mere fuzzy knot, from which, by and by, there emerges a soft, furry,
tawny-colored kitten's paw. I know of nothing in vegetable nature that
seems so really to be _born_ as the ferns. They emerge from th