colour; there are white Sweet Violets too, but none are growing in our
little wood to-day.

At the base of the blossom--the part where it joins the stem--one of the
petals has a little spur which points back towards the stem. The blossom
is therefore said to be spurred; we may presently see other plants with
spurred flowers.

There is another violet which grows wild in England--the Dog Violet. It
is larger than our Sweet Violets here, but it has no scent.

[Illustration: ANEMONE.]

While we have been examining the flowers on the ground, the nut bushes
above our heads are waiting to remind us of what we said just now--that
trees also have flowers. The flowers of the nut bush or hazel are easily
seen, for they appear before the leaves are open. What we see to-day are
often called catkins, but the name which country children give them is
lambs'-tails. It is a very good name, too, for they are more like the
tail of some tiny lamb than anything else.

These catkins are yellowish-white in colour, and soft and almost woolly
to the touch. They hang in clusters from the hazel twigs, and in the
strong March wind which blows to-day, they shake and flutter like the
tails of lambs at play. Some of them leave a dusty powder on our fingers
when we handle them; that is the pollen of the flower.

It is not where these yellow "catkins" are dancing on the twigs to-day
that the hazel nuts will appear in autumn. The nuts will grow on twigs
where there are very small red flowers--something like tiny