which hang, almost full-formed, above the ice all winter, show no such
solicitude, but when March wooes them they are ready. Once relaxing,
their pollen is so prompt to fall that it sprinkles your hand as you
gather them; then, for one day, they are the perfection of grace upon
your table, and next day they are weary and emaciated, and their little
contribution to the spring is done.

Then many eyes watch for the opening of the May-flower, day by day,
and a few for the Hepatica. So marked and fantastic are the local
preferences of all our plants, that, with miles of woods and meadows
open to their choice, each selects only some few spots for its
accustomed abodes, and some one among them all for its very earliest
blossoming. There is always some single chosen nook, which you might
almost cover with your handkerchief, where each flower seems to bloom
earliest, without variation, year by year. I know one such place for
Hepatica a mile northeast,--another for May-flower two miles southwest;
and each year the whimsical creature is in bloom on that little spot,
when not another flower can be found open through the whole country
round. Accidental as the choice may appear, it is undoubtedly based
on laws more eternal than the stars; yet why all subtile influences
conspire to bless that undistinguishable knoll no man can say. Another
and similar puzzle offers itself in the distribution of the tints
of flowers,--in these two species among the rest. There are certain
localities, near by, where the Hepatica is all but white, and others
where the May-flower is sumptuous in pink; yet it is not traceable to
wet or dry, sun or shadow, and no agricultural chemistry can disclose
the secret. Is it by some Darwinian law of selection that the white
Hepatica has utterly overpowered the blue, in our Cascade Woods, for
instance, while yet in the very midst of this pale plantation a single
clump will sometimes bloom with all heaven on its petals? Why can one