Earliest Signs of Spring 
and dicotyledonots vegetation; the former 
much the simpler, and far more quickly and 
abundantly responding to the warmth of spring 
than the latter. This former group—the en- 
dogenous—contains the grass, that hardly waits 
for the snow to melt before it shoots up its fresh 
green blades; also the snow-drop, crocus, and 
trillium, with the various liliaceous forms of life 
conspicuously sprouting along the water-courses, 
like the blue-flags and the ‘‘ laughing daffodils.”’ 
The second and higher group—the exogens— 
is thus early represented, with slight exception, 
only by the inferior amentaceous trees and 
shrubs, that anticipate by several weeks the 
more highly organized varieties. 
We sometimes say that Nature makes excep- 
tions to her laws; but there is good reason 
to doubt whether she ever jumps the track of 
her own established principles. Exceptions are 
but the unsightly gaps, from our point of view, 
in a plan too vast for us as yet to comprehend. 
And thus, in this matter of vegetable progres- 
sion, our plan does not quite harmonize with 
hers; and so wecomplacently say that she now 
and then goes off in a tangent. At all events 
she allows, sometimes, the various types of life 
to overlap each other, so that a lower species of 
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