BY BANK AND COPSE. 25 



oval, gold-studded balls, each with something of an upward 

 growth, it bears longer catkins, with a more horizontal 

 direction, and clad in more sober silver-grey without a 

 particle of gold. These are the " silver pussy palms " of 

 the children, and it is they only that will bear fruit in 

 summer, when the golden palms of the other tree have 

 faded into nothingness; for the former are collections of 

 flowers, each consisting of a downy ovary with a sticky 

 stigma, to which the bees or the wind carry the fertilising 

 pollen from the other trees. Yonder " hedgerow elm " and 

 the hazels we can see from here at the edge of the wood, 

 alike illustrate this production of flowers before the leaves 

 in the windy season. The boughs of the elm waving in 

 their lace -like tracery against the sky catch a rich claret 

 hue in the fleeting sunlight. This is from their clusters of 

 flowers, which have red anthers, as those of the willow have 

 golden ones; but in this case pollen-bearing anthers and 

 stigma-bearing ovary are in the same little flower, and 

 perhaps it only requires a little March breeze to shake 

 the pollen from the one on to the sticky surface of the 

 other. 



To reach the wood there is yet a field for us to cross. 

 A gate stands open for a horse-drill that is working in one 

 part of the field, and as we pass it we are greeted with the 

 wished-for perfume. Now it is violets in earnest, the sweet 

 violets of the end of March, that may be found as early as 

 the middle of February, but too often are not out before 

 the equinox here they are, purple and white ones growing 

 together in the grass of this hedge-row bank, so fragrant 

 and so beautiful that we expect to be called profane if we 

 do not abandon ourselves to simple admiration. But 

 knowledge, and not ignorance, is the true parent of 



