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Hniong tbe Jf^lbe ]flov\)er6— ^be MooMan&0* 



By William Cross. 



H 



' ' There lives and works 

 A soul in all things, and that soul is God. 

 The beauties of the wilderness are His, 

 That make so gay the solitary place. 

 He sets the bright procession on its way, 

 And marshals all the order of the year ; 

 And ere one flowering season fades and dies, 

 Designs the blooming wonders of the next." 



— Cowper. 



E who would make his own the secrets of Flora in the 

 Woodlands must commence his rounds of observation 

 early in the springtime, long before 



" . . . Aprille, with his schowres swoote 

 The drought of Marche hath perced to the roote." 



The first sunny day in February is the best time to begin, just 

 after a general thaw has once again softened the ground. 



The Hazel Catkins open their storehouses of pollen in good 

 time, and when the end of March is reached it is often too late to 

 gather the glowing crimson-styled female flowers. The Beech, the 

 Alder, the Poplar, and the Elm also bloom, mostly before the 

 leaves have burst their bud scales. The wind-borne pollen is 

 caught by the stigmas as it is blown to and fro through the naked 

 boughs. If the flowers came after the leaves had grown, pollina- 

 tion could not easily be effected, because the leaves would 

 intercept a large portion. 



Not very far from Lytham, in a wood rich in elm, beech, oak, 

 ash, and chestnut ; where the rooks noisily attend to their domestic 

 duties high overhead and the mistletoe thrush constructs his bold 

 nest in almost every other tree ; where in early springtime the 

 Winter-Aconite and the Snowdrop contest every square inch of 

 surface ; where later the changing flowers of the Lungwort are 

 fast outgrown and smothered by terrible crops of nettles ; where 

 in many a cosy nook hundreds of lilies hide their fragrant racemes 

 beneath the attendant glossy leaves ; where the daffodil flirts with 

 the sunbeams, and where the bluebell, the sweet woodruff, and the 



