FEBRUARY. 73 



bill, containing an enumeration in figures of the amount of 

 grubs and insects he had destroyed, we should probably be 

 startled at our own indebtedness, and be willing to pay him 

 more liberally than he now pays himself, if this were neces- 

 sary to insure a continuance of his services. 



WINTER AND THE FLORA OF SOME NORTHERN REGIONS. 



BY JOHN L. RUSSELL, PROF. BOTANY TO THE MASS. HORT. SOCIETY, &c. 



A clear, cold winter's morning, with the mercury some- 

 where in the neighborhood of zero, — whether a trifle or more 

 above or below, matters little, — reminds us of still colder re- 

 gions ; and we bethink ourselves of those intrepid voyagers 

 who, for the cause of Science, or prompted by a nobler phi- 

 lanthropy, have dared rigors of weather, in comparison with 

 which our fickle New England temperature were bland in- 

 deed, and almost vernal in breezes and in sleety showers,. 



It is seldom the weather is so cold, the sun so shorn of its 

 vivifying rays, or the snow so continuous in its visits, that 

 we cannot feast our eyes with a few traces of vegetation, to 

 cheer the otherwise sterile aspect of the season of winter. 

 'Tis true, that this old, icy monarch oftentimes lingers in the 

 lap of spring, and such delays as he occasions by his own tar- 

 diness and want of a sense of propriety makes almost good 

 the saying that we have but two seasons in our New Eng- 

 land year, viz., summer and winter. Yet the eye that is cu- 

 rious to watch the instincts and impulses of life in its lower 

 and more unheeded forms, can often find in many a winter, 

 in this vicinity especially, numerous objects of interest and 

 curiosity. To say nothing of the variety of the earliest blos- 

 soms of our so called spring, whose buds are waiting in scarce- 

 ly patient durance the genial sunbeams of expectant April, 

 and w^hich look, under a January thaw, in some sunny, bared 

 spot, as if they were actually " moving in the good work" 

 of circulation of sap and such mysteries of vegetation, — the 

 paly-roseate streaks on the scarcely revealed petal of the Ep- 



VOL. XXI. NO. II. 10 



