SPEIXG IN CANADA. 7 



dreary season is never so absolute as quite to quench the 

 activities of either vegetable or animal life, and where 

 that face may be said to put on a somewhat gradual smile 

 ere it breaks out into full joyous laughter — much more 

 impressive is the coming in of spring with all its charms 

 in such a country as Canada, where the transition is 

 abrupt, and a few days change the scene from a waste of 

 snow to universal warmth, verdure, and beauty. I have ob- 

 served, with admiration, how suddenly the brown poplar 

 woods put on a flush of tender yellow-green from the 

 rapidly-opening leaves ; how quickly the maple trees are 

 covered with crimson blossoms ; how brilliant flowers are 

 fast springing up through the dead leaves in the forests ; 

 how gay butterflies and beetles are playing on every bank 

 where the snow lay a w^eek before ; and how the bushes 

 are ringing with melody from hundreds of birds, which 

 have been for months silent. The first song of spring 

 comes on the heart with peculiar power, after the mute 

 desolation of winter, and more especially when, as in 

 the country I speak of, it suddenly bursts forth in a whole 

 orchestra at once. The song-sparrow is the chief per- 

 former in this early concert ; a very melodious little crea- 

 ture, though of unpretending plumage. 



Much of all this charm lies in the circumstantials, the 

 associations. It may be that there is something in the 

 psychical, perhaps even in the physical condition of the 

 observer, superinduced by the season itself, that makes 

 him in spring more open to pleasurable emotions from 

 the sights and sounds of nature. But much depends on 



