28 A SHARP LOOKOUT. 



violet was sweet-scented. In view of the capricious- 

 ness of the perfume of certain of our wild flowers, I 

 have during the past few years tried industriously to 

 convict myself of error in respect to this flower. The 

 round-leaved yellow violet was one of the earliest and 

 most abundant wild flowers in the woods where my 

 youth was passed, and whither I still make annual 

 pilgrimages. I have pursued it on mountains and in 

 lowlands, in " beechen woods " and amid the hem- 

 locks ; and while, with respect to its earliness, it 

 overtakes the hepatica in the latter part of April, 

 as do also the dog's-tooth violet and the claytonia, 

 yet the first hepaticas, where the two plants grow 

 side by side, bloom about a week before the first vio- 

 let. And I have yet to find one that has an odor 

 that could be called a perfume. A handful of them, 

 indeed, has a faint, bitterish smell, not unlike that of 

 the dandelion in quality ; but if every flower that has 

 a smell is sweet-scented, then every bird that makes a 

 noise is a songster. 



On the occasion above referred to, I also dissented 

 from Lowell's statement, in " Al Fresco," that in 

 early summer the dandelion blooms, in general, with 

 the buttercup and the clover. I am aware that such 

 criticism of the poets is small game, and not worth 

 the powder. General truth, and not specific fact, is 

 what we are to expect of the poets. Bryant's " Yel- 

 low Violet " poem is tender and appropriate, and such 

 as only a real lover and observer of nature could feel 

 or express, and Lowell's " Al Fresco " is full of the 



