132 STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



leaves have fallen, and adorn the branches of the trees with 

 their slender yellow petals after the leaves have fallen, so that 

 you can see them as you ride along the road, see them by the 

 roadside, from the fringed gentians the late witch-hazel blos- 

 soms it is only a narrow step to the early wild catkins and the 

 later catkins of the coming spring, in fact you may find the 

 alder in full bloom in the fall, even the pollen yellow upon the 

 catkins, so that the interval between fall and spring is, as it 

 were, bridged over by the fact that spring flowers come in the 

 late fall anticipating the following spring, and occasionally, of 

 course, the fall flowers go on later and later until they hold sway 

 close up to the reign of the snow and the sleet. The interval 

 then during which winter holds absolute control is very slight 

 and the reign of winter is broken all the while by the fact that 

 try as it may it cannot exhaust the current of vegetable life that 

 flows on and on until it makes the complete circuit of the year, 

 in hidden root, in bulb, in stem, in bud, wrapped up safely from 

 the winter's harm of the life that all the while is in a state of 

 semi-activity and all the while waiting for the first warm days 

 of spring to call it into full action. We cannot say that for a 

 single moment the life current stops in the vegetable growth 

 about us, but that the year is continuous. It is admitted that 

 the few ferns which remain green through the winter, that the 

 leaves of the boxberry plum plant, the leaves of the checker- 

 berry, the wintergreen — the trailing wintergreen or the check- 

 erberry, that these are living all the while. These do not have 

 the vigorous life of summer but nevertheless it is true that in 

 mid winter nature is full of life, ready to manifest itself at the 

 first favorable opportunity in the spring, so that the year is 

 continuous. The spring flowers come on, the skunk cabbage 

 blooms in the swamps — I am sorry to say not in swamps near 

 Waterville because it does not grow there, but in different parts 

 of our State it pushes up its little red hands as it were in the 

 very midst of the ice in the wet, damp places and unfolds its 

 blossom before the leaves come. Other flowers come ; the 

 hepatica comes. I have found it in April when wading through 

 the snow drift, on the south side of the woods — the hepaticas 

 in full blossom and the butterflies flying about from one flower 

 to another. Then the trailing arbutus, the Mayflower, and 

 others follow on and on in rapid succession until the full throb 



