A SPRING RELISH 169 



see what arts she used, but I saw her being very 

 roughly handled by the jealous bride. The battle 

 continued nearly all day about the orchard and 

 grounds, and was a battle at very close quarters. 

 The two birds would clinch in the air or on a tree, 

 and fall to the ground with beaks and claws locked. 

 The male followed them about, and warbled and 

 called, but whether deprecatingly or encouragingly, 

 I could not tell. Occasionally, he would take a 

 hand, but whether to separate them or whether to 

 fan the flames, that I could not tell. So far as I 

 could see, he was highly amused, and culpably in- 

 different to the issue of the battle. 



The English spring begins much earlier than 

 ours in New England and New York, yet an excep- 

 tionally early April with us must be nearly, if not 

 quite, abreast with April as it usually appears in 

 England. The black-thorn sometimes blooms in 

 Britain in February, but the swallow does not 

 appear till about the 20th of April, nor the anemone 

 bloom ordinarily till that date. The nightingale 

 comes about the same time, and the cuckoo follows 

 close. Our cuckoo does not come till near June; 

 but the water-thrush, which Audubon thought 

 nearly equal to the nightingale as a songster (though 

 it certainly is not), I have known to come by the 

 21st. I have seen the sweet English violet, escaped 

 from the garden, and growing wild by the roadside, 

 in bloom on the 25th of March, which is about its 

 date of flowering at home. During the same sea- 

 son, the first of our native flowers to appear was 



