APRIL 8j 



Blossoms and dewdrops at the bent spray's edge 

 That's the wise thrush ; he sings each song twice over, 

 Lest you should think he never could recapture 

 The first fine careless rapture ! " 



Very slowly the leaves are opening on the branches of 

 hedge and tree, but we know that Spring is with us once 

 again, and even the first blossoms which she brought with her 

 are all but faded the Daphne and the coltsfoot among them. 

 The flowers of our woods grow day by day more and more 

 beautiful under April's azure skies, swept at times by white 

 clouds that pass with their wonderful forms of line and curve, 

 and that 



" Take the shape 

 With fold to fold, of mountain or of cape." 



Yet surely, if slowly, the silvery greyness of the woods 

 is growing greener with unfolding bud and leaf. So when 

 April comes, with its hours of unfolding leaves, well spent 

 were any hour with Nature in reading a chapter of her leaf- 

 lore, where she would tell you how " the green leaf is the 

 source of all the rivers and streams in the world. That it is 

 by the agency of the leaf that water circulates as the life-blood 

 of the globe. In a leafless world there would be no rains and 

 no streams." The wonders of the green leaf are inexhaustible. 

 " All the parts of a plant are but modifications of the leaf. 

 The stem is a leaf rolled up tight; the blossom is a leaf 

 transfigured for a higher purpose ; the fruit is a leaf turned 

 into a receptacle for the seed. All organisms, whether animal 

 or vegetable, are similar in their elementary structure and 

 form ; and the most complicated results are obtained by the 

 simplest conceivable means, and that without the slightest 

 violations of the original plan of Nature. The palm of 



