as it used to be called in botany, though it is now the _Thalictrum
Anemonoides_, I believe--is among the fairest of all these flowers of
spring. She has a blossom as white as snow. The _Anemone Nemrosa_ is
almost as fair, too, though not quite, I think. You can sometimes see them
both smiling side by side, early in the month of May, nodding gracefully at
each other, and smiling as if they were very happy. It does not require
much imagination to fancy they are conversing together; and, indeed, I
would quite as soon believe that flowers could talk, as I would believe
those stories about the fairies that children hear sometimes.

There is another beautiful flower which makes her appearance very
early--the _Spring Beauty_, or _Claytonia Virginica_. She is
usually found in the same locations with the Anemone. Then there is the
_Liver Leaf_. Did you ever find that, little girl? Very possibly you
have not taken a ramble early enough in the spring to see her. She makes
her visit frequently in the latter part of April, and she does not stay
long. But after her flower has faded and fallen, there may be seen a few
deeply notched and curious leaves, to mark the spot where she bloomed so
sweetly.

The _Blood Root_, too, will make her visit, and go away again, if you
delay your ramble in the woods till the first of May. The blossom of the
Blood Root is a very delicate white. Hundreds of exotic flowers are
cultivated in our gardens, and very much admired, that are not half so
pretty as this. The leaves that appear before the plant is in blossom, are
oval, a little like those of the Adder's Tongue, which is in flower
somewhat later, and like those of one species of the Solomon's Seal--the
_Convallaria Bifolia_. But when the flower of the Blood Root appears,
you see quite a different kind of leaf, so that even close observers of
wild flowers are sometimes deceived, and think that their early leaves