CATKIN TIME 51 



Yet, if we are conscious of them at all, it is merely 

 as an odour, while we fondly imagine that the 

 catkins themselves are just one of the fancies 

 of Spring's paint-brush somehow designed for our 

 delectation. 



I have got down a spray from the alder tree's 

 primrose mountain. At the tip it bears on three 

 twigs three of the male catkins. The pale yellow 

 is sprinkled with hard brown dots, in which you 

 recognize the colour that belonged to the whole 

 catkin before it opened. You can shut up the 

 concertina with difficulty, and the brown dots 

 come together, reproducing the state of affairs that 

 by itself it can never reproduce. On the next 

 twig above the catkin twig is one bearing five 

 tiny little cones, which a magnifying-glass shows 

 to be slashed with crimson, and to be potentially 

 shaped like the dry and open cones of last year 

 that still adhere to the tree. Remote from both 

 catkins and cone, on the same spray but nearer 

 to the trunk, are the leaf buds, as yet showing 

 few signs of opening. 



Nearly always the male catkins open before the 

 females. All nature is thus gallant. The ladies 

 must not be kept waiting, and often and often it 

 is the fate of the male to perish in a late frost that 

 just misses the more phlegmatic sex. The male 

 nightingale, willow wren, or other migrant arrives 

 by a more perilous passage some days before the 

 hen, as though to prepare a place for her in this 

 cold country ; the cocks of our resident species 



