SPRING AT THE SOUTH AND AT THE NORTH. 



wind, blowing fresli from the tropics, fans your cheek with its fragi-ant breath, and 

 ^ves elasticity to your frame. On such days the invalid comes out from his chamber 

 and sits upon the broad piazza, which adorns every southern house, and while inhaling 

 the genial air, breathes freer, and indulges again the hope of recovery. But such 

 weather continues only a few days at a time. The air is, for the most part, so cold 

 that nearly all vegetation remains dormant. A few birds are seen throughout the 

 winter, such as pelican, gull, fish-hawk, &c., on the rivers and sea-shore ; and the blue 

 jay, wren, blue-bird, turkey buzzard and crow, inland. The last named seems to have 

 a bronchial affection, — his cato being quite feeble and husky. 



The first indication of coming spring is seen not in any change of the weather, but 

 in the planting of Irish potatoes! Gardens are seldom plowed for this purpose, but 

 merely dug over with a heavy hoe. Trenches, eight or ten inches deep, are then 

 made, a little manure is spread in the bottom, the potato dropped in, and the whole 

 covered with several inches of soil. 



Early in February, the air gradually becomes milder. Fires are often suffered to go 

 down in the middle of the day, and one feels an irresistable desire to stroll in the 

 fields in search of some fresh green leaf or spring flower. Nor will he search in vain, 

 for the mulberry is now expanding its leaves, and the peach is opening here and there 

 a blossom. A few days later, you will find the wild blue violet, and pink, white, and 

 yellow flowers as modest as the violet. If you walk in the neighborhood of streams 

 or marshy places, you will notice next the scarlet blossoms of the soft maple. 

 Soon you will find the wild plum, canopied with snowy flowers, musical with bees, 

 and filling the air with a ^ileasant odor ; and then the red-bud tree with its singular 

 blossoms. But perhaps more pleasing than anything yet beheld, will be the first 

 flower of the yellow jasmine, a vine which you have noticed during the winter, 

 clambering over fences and bushes by the road-side and far up among the branches of 

 trees, now opening its numerous trumpet-shaped blossoms, and loading the air with 

 delicious fragrance. Soon the orange and fig trees push out fresh leaves, and flowers 

 appear on the blackberry, the wild rose and shrub honeysuckle. Meanwhile, the birds 

 are singing merrily. Chief among them is the mocking-bird, whom you hear early 

 in the morning and late at night ; unless we except the bob-o'-link, no bird seems so 

 gleeftil as this. Swaying upon the highest branch of a tree, he pours forth a continu- 

 ous song, and that in every dialect, as though he would tell all the feathered creation 

 what a delightful world he lives in ; or, flying about and balancing himself in the 

 air, he sings and chatters all the while, as though he had more joy than he could well 

 contain. 



In the latter part of February, and early in March, trees of all kinds put forth fresh 

 leaves. Tlie pine sends out the yellow tufts on the ends of its branches. The leaves 

 of the live and water oak rustle to the ground, being pushed off by the opening of 

 new leaf buds. The dull, greyish green of the olive becomes brighter, the cabbage 

 palmetto and date tree send up central leaf stalks, and the towering magnolia (^grandi- 

 Jlora) takes on new adornments of thick, glossy leaves, and laige white flowers. Soon 

 the scarlet blossoms of the pomegranate appear, and the little brown flowers of the 



