years later Mr. George B. Emerson, in his most excellent "Report on the Trees and Shrubs growing naturally in the Forests of Massachusetts," has either seen it or heard of it growing in Pittsfield, Richmond and Hubbardston; but now I know it is equally at home in one sheltered spot within three miles of our City Hall. The first one-flowered pyrola (Moneses grandiflora, Salisb.) that I ever saw was sent to me by a friend spending the summer at Franconia, New Hampshire; yet it was not very long afterwards that it was found in the woods on the side of Rattlesnake Hill. I should be surprised to find a grove of coco-nut palms (Cocos nucifera, L.) in the neighborhood of Worcester, but I am not surprised to find a Lilliputian imitation of it in a handful of that interesting liverwort (Marchantia polymorpha, L.), everywhere common.

Some plants are so conspicuous and so common, have such an innate attractive quality, that they have found a place in the literature and the life of the people. They are wrought into its art, its poetry and its legends. It is the native flora, however, and not the exotic, which thus wins its way into the hearts of the people. In the poet's verse, in many different lands, are embalmed sweet and sunny memories, it may be of the date-palm among the Arabs, of the rose among the Persians, of the lotus among the Egyptians, of the olive among the Greeks, of the fleur-de-lis among the French, of the

eglantine, the heather and others among the English, of the violet, the trailing arbutus, the painted-cup, the golden-rod and others among ourselves. The native flora is that which is associated with most of our recollections of Nature. Fields of buttercups and daisies belong to the memories of spring always, wild roses and wild berries to the summer, asters and golden-rods to the autumn. It is no wonder that, after that first severe winter at Plymouth, the Pilgrims gave to the early flowers and the early bird-visitors names which recalled the scenes of their childhood in that far-off old home.

The great event of the year is the sun's crossing the Equator. The vernal equinox, in a sense the initial point of the year, is surely the initial point for plant and animal life. It brings longer days; it brings sunshine, warmth, light, hope. It strikes the key-note in the great anthem of Life, which will rise in grand and ever grander strains through the few coming months. It is the herald of many beauties.

"In the Spring a fuller crimson comes upon the

robin's breast;

In the Spring the wanton lapwing gets himself

another crest;

In the Spring a livelier iris changes on the

burnished dove;

In the Spring a young man's fancy lightly turns

to thoughts of love."

Nearly all flowering plants are divided into the two great groups of wind-fertilized (anemophilous) and insect-fertilized (entomophilous) flowers. In the early spring, while the hordes of insects are not yet astir, but while the winds are never sleeping in their efforts to restore the equilibrium of the atmosphere disturbed by the northward progress of the sun, the anemophilous flowers hasten to open. The catkins of the alders, willows, poplars, hazels, birches, oaks, walnuts, butternut, beech, sweet-fern, sweet gale, bayberry, hornbeam and hop-hornbeam, which were formed during the preceding summer, now scatter their fertilizing pollen freely and abundantly to the wooing breezes. These flowers lack the color and the perfume which render so many entomophilous flowers so attractive. Not depending on the visits of insects to secure fertilization, they do not need the attractive charms which would bring them. They do need projecting stamens laden with pollen, most of which may be wasted-for Nature is in many ways reckless in the use of her material, but enough will remain to accomplish the desired purpose. The fact that the leaves of these trees and shrubs are not yet expanded would seem to indicate that Nature does not wish to interpose unnecessarily any obstacle to the pollen on its journey to the waiting stigma.

But the general interest does not lie in such flowers as these, consisting as they do mainly of the essential