The daily morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven, Conn.) 1894-1907, 1898-02-07
VERY BEAUTIFUL SCENERY
IN THE GORGEOUS PINE BAR
RENS.

Winters Wonderful Coat of Many Col
ors Spread Over Southern New Jer-
sey.
The pine barrens of southern New
Jersey. which in the season of bios
SONS are veritable garden of wild
flowers in many exquisite hues, present
in winter, too, wonderful variety of
beautiful coloring. On sunny day in
January-if one is chosen when there
is little snow upon the ground-they
who tread these sandy woodlands find
themselves in world where summers
tints have been sobered but not con-
uered. When deciduous woods are bare
of foliage, one may find beneath the
leafy pines goodly company of plants
which have not only sturdily refused
to give up their leaves at winters rude
clustering, but in this day of their adj
versity have taken on such richness
of color as many of them never knew in
summers piping times of peace.
In the white light of January dawn
sally forth down frozen road of sand
into the pines. Covered with their
tufted green needles, the trees stretch
away on every hand in long avenues of
restfulness with busy seedlings, like
little toddling children, clinging about
their feet. These are principally pitch
pines-Pinus alphabetically, the rigid
pine. How well named rigid one sees
as he notices their action before a high
wind. Where the white pines would
bend gracefully and toss their branches
with an elastic motion, these rigid
pines doggedly jerk backward and for
ward, their trunks stiff as ramrods
from top to bottom, and as graceless,
every branch tense and unyielding. The
resistless blast forces them aside as it
rushes along, but it cannot make them
bow.
Athwart the sky, the sour gum
spreads it's wild branches in black hori-
zontal lines, bare of verdure save for
the grayish-green lichens that occa-
sionally hang in long tresses from the
bark. 1t Is an uncanny looking tree at
this seasonal fit trysting place for
witches. 1t has restless, startled air
about it, the very opposite of the
M peaceful, dignifled white cedar, which
is the prevailing tree of the swamps, a
beautiful evergreen whose verdant
limbs at this season are strung with
punches of tiny cones, once blue but
now a frosty brown. For neighbor it
has the cheerful holly, amid whose ev-
ergreen leaves the red berries glow all
winter long.
On the small oaks-black jack and
scrub-the leathery leaves still cling,
but tanned by the winter to a sober
brown. Far behind them the sun, her
aided by fleck or two of rosy cloud,
lifts his great round face above the
horizon. is level rays gid with linpid
yellow all the pine tops, and light up
the brown oak leaves like magic,
transmitting their dead color in a
twinkling back to October's living hues
Ito crimson and orange red and olive
green. Yet so absolutely are these
colors the suns work that they are
visible only as one looks toward the
sun; backward from the light all is
brown again.
SO lightly lies the snow upon the
ground that all is varied color of the
forest carpet is spread before the eye.
Amid the pine needles, scattered ev-
erywhere in tones of reddish brown,
beds Of MOSES show in green's and yell
lows Patches of licheens, too, in vari-
GUS shades Of white and dull fiaves-
sent green, line the pathside-some, in
the sunshine, almost a sulphur yellow.
Flat mats Of pyxie, which in May are
SO covered with white bloom as to
CLEAN in the sand like spots of linger-
IL
Upon them the fingers of the frost have
Indeed done murderous work, staining
the leaves deep crimson till the
e-clustered vines look like great
splashes of blood upon the gray
ground. In many places the bearber-
RVS PROSTATE stems, sometimes six
feet long, make small vineyards in the
sand. Their winter leaves are very
beautiful, those of the older growth
shining in shades of bronzy green
family flushed with red; those of the
new shoots a lively crimson edged with
a fringe of minute white hairs. In the
midst of the foliage the berries, dark
red and purple, glow DULY, while here
and there tiny white buds give evil
dence that the plant plant is already
preparing for the busy days of spring
Soft tufts of green, grasslike leaves
mark the spots where the stately
white racemes of the turkey beard
took with beauty the winds of the June
that is gone, and cradle now the bios
SONS of the June that is to come.
The heaths that contribute so richly
to the beauty of the pine lands in
spring and summer are interesting as
well in winter. The twigs of the low
huckleberry bushes are bare of leaf
but not of life, for the tiny buds of the
new year are red as sparks upon them
The bushes of the sand myrtle which
grows in profusion in these dry sands
are exquisitely beautiful, their shiny
green leaves rejecting the sunbeams
in countless points of light like sc
many sparkling jewels. Examined in
fiividual1y the branches of the little
plants are found to be tipped witt
fiery red shoots, whereon the tender
green foliage has a pinkish glow, an6
each young leaf is edged with a line OF
red. With it the sheep laurel loves te
congregate and in these cold days
looks sheepish indeed, it's rosy greer
leaves all dropping dejectedly upor
their stalks. AS alert as the sheer