A few twigs any trouble time has come to develop themselves. Last autumn we bade the blossoms of the witch hazel (Hamamelis Virginiana, L.) a hearty welcome after its leaves had fallen; this spring we shall bid as hearty a welcome to the flowers of the common hazel (Corylus Americana, Walt.) before the leaves have appeared. Although they have some resemblance in name, they are far removed botanically from each other. They occupy almost as remote positions in the seasons; the one among the foremost to appear, the other bringing up the rear. The common hazel is lured forth by the balmy winds of early April; the witch hazel comes when the sun has returned to the south, and cold winter is threatening to fold us in his icy embrace. The scouts of the advance guard of the annual flower procession are in sight. The main body is not far behind. We shall need to be alert, or some parts of the gay pageant will escape our eyes. APRIL SIGNS. O fair midspring, besung so oft and oft, Thy sun that burns not, and thy breezes soft That o'er the blossoms of the orchard blow, The thousand things that 'neath the young leaves grow, Winter forgotten long, and summer near? WILLIAM MORRIS- The Earthly Paradise. The dead leaves in the glade are soft with the warm April rain and do not rustle as once they did. Their airiness, their readiness to answer to the call of the winds is gone; the burden of the winter snow has pressed upon them and crowded them down to the dark earth of which they are beginning to form a part. But beneath them life is awaking, the buds underground as well as above are swelling, myriad forms are striving to reach up into the light. Situated as we are, about half-way between the Equator and the North Pole, in one of the most highly favored latitudes, on almost the same parallel with Constantinople, Rome, Madrid, seats of the Old World civilization's bright consummate flower, it is not strange that our flora should be a varied one, partaking of both a northern and a southern character and containing species of world-wide distribution; with tropical and polar kindred. One never realizes how varied and abundant it is until some especial opportunity or some especial interest leads him to investigate carefully. Then, as the eye sees what it is looking for, ever new and farther-reaching vistas open before it, and the dis tant seems to come near. Ralph Cranfield, in Hawthorne's fairy legend of "The Three-fold Destiny," finds at the very door of his mother's dwelling the treasure he has sought in worldwide wanderings. One of my friends who has sailed toward the far North, to the Greenland coast, has often. told me of the strangeness of that wild land where, close to the foot of the great blue ice-masses, the bright summer flowers bloom; he had brought home sprays of one of those humble shrubs which, without blossoms, we had concluded must be the Labrador tea (Ledum latifolium, Ait.). In that now classic work, the “Florula Bostoniensis," the third and best edition of which appeared in 1840, Dr. Bigelow describes the Labrador tea, but is obliged to refer to Mount Monadnock and the White Mountains as its nearest known habitats. Six |