song-sparrow and the bluebird appear about the first of March, and quite
a number more by the middle of April. This is a peculiarity of the
English spring which I have never seen explained or even mentioned.

After the epigaea and the hepatica have opened, there is a slight pause
among the wild-flowers,--these two forming a distinct prologue for their
annual drama, as the brilliant witch-hazel in October brings up its
separate epilogue. The truth is, Nature attitudinizes a little, liking
to make a neat finish with everything, and then to begin again with
_éclat_. Flowers seem spontaneous things enough, but there is evidently
a secret marshalling among them, that all may be brought out with due
effect. As the country-people say that so long as any snow is left on
the ground more snow may be expected, it must all vanish simultaneously
at last,--so every seeker of spring-flowers has observed how accurately
they seem to move in platoons, with little straggling. Each species
seems to burst upon us with a united impulse; you may search for them
day after day in vain, but the day when you find one specimen the spell
is broken and you find twenty. By the end of April all the margins
of the great poem of the woods are illuminated with these exquisite
vignettes.

Most of the early flowers either come before the full unfolding of their
leaves or else have inconspicuous ones. Yet Nature always provides for
her bouquets the due proportion of green. The verdant and graceful
sprays of the wild raspberry are unfolded very early, long before its
time of flowering. Over the meadows spread the regular Chinese-pagodas
of the equisetum, (horsetail or scouring-rush,) and the rich coarse
vegetation of the veratrum, or American hellebore. In moist copses the
ferns and osmundas begin to uncurl in April, opening their soft coils
of spongy verdure, coated with woolly down, from which the humming-bird