The Dead Limbs Of The Willow Were Rounded And Adorned By The Climbing Mikania, _Mikania Scandens_, Which Filled Every Crevice In The Leafy Bank, Contrasting Agreeably With The Gray Bark Of Its Supporter And The Balls Of The Button-Bush.

The water willow, _Salix Purshiana_, when it is of large size and entire, is the most graceful and ethereal of our trees.

Its masses of light green foliage, piled one upon another to the height of twenty or thirty feet, seemed to float on the surface of the water, while the slight gray stems and the shore were hardly visible between them. No tree is so wedded to the water, and harmonizes so well with still streams. It is even more graceful than the weeping willow, or any pendulous trees, which dip their branches in the stream instead of being buoyed up by it. Its limbs curved outward over the surface as if attracted by it. It had not a New England but an Oriental character, reminding us of trim Persian gardens, of Haroun Alraschid, and the artificial lakes of the East.

As we thus dipped our way along between fresh masses of foliage overrun with the grape and smaller flowering vines, the surface was so calm, and both air and water so transparent, that the flight of a kingfisher or robin over the river was as distinctly seen reflected in the water below as in the air above. The birds seemed to flit through submerged groves, alighting on the yielding sprays, and their clear notes to come up from below.

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