for the whole month of April to pass away without producing more than
two or three species of wild-flowers." But I have formerly found the
hepatica in bloom at Mount Auburn, for three successive years, on the
twenty-seventh of March; and last spring it was actually found, farther
inland, where the season is later, on the seventeenth. The May-flower is
usually as early, though the more gradual expansion of the buds renders
it less easy to give dates. And there are nearly twenty species which I
have noted, for five or six years together, as found before May-Day, and
which may therefore be properly assigned to April. The list includes
bloodroot, cowslip, houstonia, saxifrage, dandelion, chickweed,
cinquefoil, strawberry, mouse-ear, bellwort, dog's-tooth violet, five
species of violet proper, and two of anemone. These are all common
flowers, and easily observed; and the catalogue might be increased by
rare ones, as the white corydalis, the smaller yellow violet, (_V.
rotundifolia_,) and the claytonia or spring-beauty.

But in England the crocus and the snowdrop--neither being probably an
indigenous flower, since neither is mentioned by Chaucer--usually open
before the first of March; indeed, the snowdrop was formerly known by
the yet more fanciful name of "Fair Maid of February." Chaucer's daisy
comes equally early; and March brings daffodils, narcissi, violets,
daisies, jonquils, hyacinths, and marsh-marigolds. This is altogether in
advance of our season, so far as the flowers give evidence,--though we
have plucked snowdrops in February. But, on the other hand, it would
appear, that, though a larger number of birds winter in England than in
Massachusetts, yet the return of those which migrate is actually earlier
among us. From journals kept during sixty years in England, and an
abstract of which is printed in Hone's "Every-Day Book," it appears that
only two birds of passage revisit England before the fifteenth of April,
and only thirteen more before the first of May; while with us the