-A SHARP LOOKOUT. 27 



sweet clover, but I never could find another that had 

 any odor. A pupil disputed with his teacher about 

 the hepatica, claiming in opposition that it was sweet- 

 scented. Some hepaticas are sweet-scented and some 

 are not, and the perfume is stronger some seasons 

 than others. After the unusually severe winter of 

 1880-81, the variety of hepatica called the sharp- 

 lobed was markedly sweet in nearly every one of the 

 hundreds of specimens I examined. A handful of 

 them exhaled a most delicious perfume. The white 

 ones that season were largely in the ascendant, and 

 probably the white specimens of both varieties, one 

 season with another, will oftenest prove sweet-scented. 

 Darwin says a considerably larger proportion of white 

 flowers are sweet-scented than of any other color. 

 The only sweet violets I can depend upon are white, 

 viola blanda and viola Canadensis, and white largely 

 predominates among our other odorous wild flowers. 

 All the fruit-trees have white or pinkish blossoms. I 

 recall no native blue flower of New York or New 

 England that is fragrant except in the rare case of the 

 arrow-leaved violet, above referred to. The earliest 

 yellow flowers, like the dandelion and yellow violets, 

 are not fragralit. Later in the season yellow is fre- 

 quently accompanied with fragrance, as in the even- 

 ing primrose, the yellow lady's slipper, hprned blad- 

 derwort, and others. 



My readers probably remember that on a former 

 occasion I have mildly taken the poet Bryant to task 

 for leading his readers to infer that the early yellow 



