12 THE PLANT-WORLD IN MARCH. 



then few, now abound : flowers, then fully out, are now 

 fading to their disappearance. If then "the season's 

 difference," or the early date of our visit, disappoint us of 

 some beauty which we were led to expect, it will often only 

 be necessary for us to go again, and, so going, we may rest 

 assured that, if we use our eyes and ears, many another 

 beauty, though unexpected, will be ours. 



At the outset of our walk perhaps we come to a roadside 

 farm with apple-orchard and old-fashioned garden. Here 

 on some veteran tree, of no great value for its fruit, hangs a 

 reminder of Christmas, a bunch of mistletoe conspicuous 

 midst the bare grey crooked apple-boughs in its vivid 

 yellow-green. It is now in flower ; but its insignificant 

 greenish blossoms, though presenting some points of 

 interest to the botanist, are less familiar than its pearly 

 berries. If the bunch happen to be a male one (for in 

 this species the sexes are on different plants) the little four- 

 cleft flowers will well repay examination, for each segment 

 bears on its surface a honeycomb-like stamen, which 

 discharges its pollen in this unusual way through many 

 openings. As the bough hangs, growing, unlike most 

 plants, mainly in a downward direction, one is reminded 

 that from this fact, according to the quaint old-world 

 medical doctrine of signatures, mistletoe was looked upon 

 as a specific for giddiness or epilepsy, the "falling 

 sickness " of our ancestors, 



From the short grass beneath the apple-trees spreads a 

 wide patch of the glossy green frills of the winter 

 aconite; but its golden stars of blossom have nearly all 

 been washed away by the rain. Close by rise in the 

 stiffness of their youth the narrow grey-green leaves of a 

 tuft of daffodils, among which a few flower-stalks bear 



